Earth, our home, is the third planet from the sun. It’s the only planet known to have an atmosphere containing free oxygen, oceans of water on its surface and, of course, life. Earth is the fifth largest of the planets in the solar system.

Our home planet is the third planet from the Sun, and the only place we know of so far that’s inhabited by living things.

While Earth is only the fifth largest planet in the solar system, it is the only world in our solar system with liquid water on the surface. Just slightly larger than nearby Venus, Earth is the biggest of the four planets closest to the Sun, all of which are made of rock and metal.

The name Earth is at least 1,000 years old. All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. However, the name Earth is a Germanic word, which simply means “the ground.”

Size and Distance

With a sweep of 3,959 miles (6,371 kilometers), Earth is the greatest of the earthbound planets, and the fifth biggest planet generally speaking.

From a normal separation of 93 million miles (150 million kilometers), Earth is actually one galactic unit far from the Sun since one cosmic unit (truncated as AU), is the separation from the Sun to Earth. This unit gives a simple method to rapidly look at planets’ separations from the Sun.

It takes around eight minutes for light from the Sun to achieve our planet.

Circle and Rotation

As Earth circles the Sun, it finishes one pivot each 23.9 hours. It takes 365.25 days to finish one trek around the Sun. That additional quarter of multi day exhibits a test to our schedule framework, which considers one year 365 days. To keep our yearly schedules steady with our circle around the Sun, like clockwork we include one day. That day is known as a jump day, and the year it’s additional to is known as a Leap year.

Earth’s hub of revolution is tilted 23.4 degrees concerning the plane of Earth’s circle around the Sun. This tilt causes our yearly cycle of seasons. During part of the year, the northern half of the globe is tilted toward the Sun and the southern side of the equator is tilted away. With the Sun higher in the sky, sun oriented warming is more prominent in the north delivering summer there. Less immediate sun based warming produces winter in the south. A half year later, the circumstance is turned around. When spring and fall start, the two halves of the globe get generally equivalent measures of warmth from the Sun.

Arrangement

At the point when the close planetary system sunk into its present format about 4.5 billion years prior, Earth shaped when gravity pulled whirling gas and residue in to turn into the third planet from the Sun. Like its individual earthbound planets, Earth has a focal center, a rough mantle and a strong outside layer.

Structure

Earth is made out of four principle layers, beginning with an inward center at the planet’s middle, encompassed by the external center, mantle and outside.

The inward center is a strong circle made of iron and nickel metals around 759 miles (1,221 kilometers) in range. There the temperature is as high as 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit (5,400 degrees Celsius). Encompassing the internal center is the external center. This layer is around 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) thick, made of iron and nickel liquids.

In the middle of the external center and covering is the mantle, the thickest layer. This hot, gooey blend of liquid shake is around 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) thick and has the consistency of caramel. The furthest layer, Earth’s outside, goes around 19 miles (30 kilometers) profound by and large ashore. At the base of the sea, the covering is more slender and stretches out around 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the ocean bottom to the highest point of the mantle.

Surface

Like Mars and Venus, Earth has volcanoes, mountains and valleys. Earth’s lithosphere, which incorporates the hull (both mainland and maritime) and the upper mantle, is separated into enormous plates that are always moving. For instance, the North American plate moves west over the Pacific Ocean bowl, generally at a rate equivalent to the development of our fingernails. Seismic tremors result when plates crush past each other, ride up more than each other, crash to make mountains, or split and isolated.

Earth’s worldwide sea, which covers almost 70 percent of the planet’s surface, has a normal profundity of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) and contains 97 percent of Earth’s water. Practically the majority of Earth’s volcanoes are covered up under these seas. Hawaii’s Mauna Kea well of lava is taller from base to summit than Mount Everest, however its greater part is submerged. Earth’s longest mountain range is likewise submerged, at the base of the Arctic and Atlantic seas. It is multiple times longer than the Andes, Rockies and Himalayas joined.

Air

Close to the surface, Earth has an air that comprises of 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent different gases, for example, argon, carbon dioxide and neon. The air influences Earth’s long haul atmosphere and transient neighborhood climate and shields us from a significant part of the hurtful radiation originating from the Sun. It additionally shields us from meteoroids, the majority of which wreck in the environment, seen as meteors in the night sky, before they can strike the surface as shooting stars.

Potential forever

Earth has an entirely neighborly temperature and blend of synthetic concoctions that have made life conceivable here. Most eminently, Earth is one of a kind in that the greater part of our planet is canvassed in water, since the temperature enables fluid water to exist for expanded timeframes. Earth’s huge seas gave an advantageous spot to life to start about 3.8 billion years back.

A portion of the highlights of our planet that make it extraordinary for supporting life are changing because of the progressing impacts of environmental change. To discover more visit our sister site, climate.nasa.gov.

Moons

Earth is the main planet that has a solitary moon. Our Moon is the most splendid and most commonplace article in the night sky. From numerous points of view, the Moon is in charge of making Earth such an incredible home. It balances out our planet’s wobble, which has made the atmosphere less factor more than a large number of years.

Earth some of the time incidentally has circling space rocks or enormous rocks. They are regularly caught by Earth’s gravity for an a couple of months or years before coming back to a circle around the Sun. A few space rocks will be in a long “move” with Earth as both circle the Sun.

A few moons are bits of shake that were caught by a planet’s gravity, however our Moon is likely the aftereffect of an impact billions of years prior. At the point when Earth was a youthful planet, an enormous piece of shake crushed into it, uprooting a segment of Earth’s inside. The subsequent lumps bunched together and shaped our Moon. With a range of 1,080 miles (1,738 kilometers), the Moon is the fifth biggest moon in our close planetary system (after Ganymede, Titan, Callisto and Io).

The Moon is more distant far from Earth than a great many people figure it out. The Moon is a normal of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away. That implies 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in the middle of Earth and the Moon.

Magnetosphere

Our planet’s quick revolution and liquid nickel-iron center offer ascent to an attractive field, which the sunlight based breeze twists into a tear shape in space. (The sun oriented breeze is a flood of charged particles persistently catapulted from the Sun.) When charged particles from the sun oriented breeze become caught in Earth’s attractive field, they slam into air atoms over our planet’s attractive shafts. These air particles at that point start to sparkle and cause aurorae, or the northern and southern lights.

The attractive field is the thing that causes compass needles to point toward the North Pole paying little heed to what direction you turn. In any case, the attractive extremity of Earth can change, flipping the heading of the attractive field. The geologic record tells researchers that an attractive inversion happens about at regular intervals all things considered, yet the planning is unpredictable. Supposedly, such an attractive inversion doesn’t make any mischief life on Earth, and an inversion is all around far-fetched to occur for in any event an additional thousand years. Be that as it may, when it happens, compass needles are probably going to point in a wide range of bearings for a couple of hundreds of years while the switch is being made. Also, after the switch is finished, they will all point south rather than north.​

10 Need-to-Know Things About Our Home Planet

1. If the Sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel.
2. Earth orbits our Sun, a star. Earth is the third planet from the Sun at a distance of about 93 million miles (150 million km).
3. A day on Earth is 24 hours. Earth makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Earth time) in about 365 days.
4. Earth is a rocky planet with a solid and dynamic surface of mountains, canyons, plains and more. Most of our planet is covered in water.
5. Earth’s atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent other ingredients—the perfect balance to breathe and live.
6. Earth has one moon.
7. Earth has no rings.
8. Many orbiting spacecraft study the Earth from above as a whole system—observing the atmosphere, ocean, glaciers, and the solid earth.
9. Earth is the perfect place for life as we know it.
10. Our atmosphere protects us from incoming meteoroids, most of which break up in our atmosphere before they can strike the surface.