10 amazing facts about our Earth 

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Trending News Earth Day: 10 amazing facts about our Earth 10 amazing facts about our Earth While we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Hour this week, let’s take a look at the wonder that our planet is! So do you know that Earth's core is as hot as the Sun’s surface? The temperature at the center of the Earth is the same as the temperature at the surface of the sun (5800 degree Celsius). Oh, that's hot. Our amazing planet has been around for quite some time. By researching our planet’s rocks, scientists have calculated the Earth to be around 4.5 billion years old! Earth is the only planet in our solar system known to support life. This is because it has two very important things that living creatures need to survive –– lots of oxygen and lots of water! Its distance from the sun means it’s not too hot and not too cold for creatures to live on, too. Earth may once have had two moons. A teensy second moon — spanning about 750 miles (1,200 km) wide — may have orbited Earth before it catastrophically slammed into the other one. Due to the amount of water covering the Earth, it would be one of the brightest planets to look upon from a distance due to the way in which the water would reflect the Sun’s rays. The Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down. However it is slowing down so very minimally (approximately 17 milliseconds per hundred years) that it will be about 140 million years before the Earth experiences 25 hour days. The Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after either a Greek or Roman God. The name Earth comes from a combination of Old English and Germanic and is derived from ‘eor(th)e’ and ‘ertha’ which mean ‘ground’. The Earth is struck by lightning 100 times per second – that’s 8.6 million times per day! If you drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, then it would take you about 42 minutes to get to the other side! Every day our planet is sprinkled with fairy dust … or dust from the heavens. On a daily basis, about 100 tons of interplanetary material (mostly in the form of dust) drifts down to the Earth's surface. The tiniest particles are released by comets as their ices vaporize near the sun.

While we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Hour this week, let’s take a look at the wonder that our planet is!

  1. So do you know that Earth’s core is as hot as the Sun’s surface? The temperature at the center of the Earth is the same as the temperature at the surface of the sun (5800 degree Celsius). Oh, that’s hot.
  2. Our amazing planet has been around for quite some time. By researching our planet’s rocks, scientists have calculated the Earth to be around 4.5 billion years old!
  3. Earth is the only planet in our solar system known to support life. This is because it has two very important things that living creatures need to survive –– lots of oxygen and lots of water! Its distance from the sun means it’s not too hot and not too cold for creatures to live on, too.
  4. Earth may once have had two moons. A teensy second moon — spanning about 750 miles (1,200 km) wide — may have orbited Earth before it catastrophically slammed into the other one.
  5. Due to the amount of water covering the Earth, it would be one of the brightest planets to look upon from a distance due to the way in which the water would reflect the Sun’s rays.
  6. The Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down. However it is slowing down so very minimally (approximately 17 milliseconds per hundred years) that it will be about 140 million years before the Earth experiences 25 hour days.
  7. The Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after either a Greek or Roman God. The name Earth comes from a combination of Old English and Germanic and is derived from ‘eor(th)e’ and ‘ertha’ which mean ‘ground’.
  8. The Earth is struck by lightning 100 times per second – that’s 8.6 million times per day!
  9. If you drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, then it would take you about 42 minutes to get to the other side!
  10. Every day our planet is sprinkled with fairy dust … or dust from the heavens. On a daily basis, about 100 tons of interplanetary material (mostly in the form of dust) drifts down to the Earth’s surface. The tiniest particles are released by comets as their ices vaporize near the sun.

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