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Earth




This article is about Earth as a planet. For the Earth's geography, see World. For other uses, see Earth (disambiguation).
Earth (IPA: /ɜrθ/) is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, in both diameter and mass. It is also referred to as the Earth, Planet Earth, Gaia, Terra,[4] and "the World".
Home to millions of species[5] including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known to have originated. Scientific evidence indicates that the planet formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years. Since then, Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful radiation, permitting life on land.
Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that gradually migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands; liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist on any other planet's surface.[10][11] Earth's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.
Earth interacts with other objects in outer space, including the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis. This length of time is a sidereal year, which is equal to 365.26 solar days.[12] The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4°[13] away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year. Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet's rotation. A cometary bombardment during the early history of the planet played a role in the formation of the oceans.[14] Later, asteroid impacts caused significant changes to the surface environment. Long term periodic changes in the Earth's orbit, caused by the gravitational influence of other planets, are believed to have given rise to the ice ages that have intermittently covered significant portions of Earth's surface in glacial sheets.

History


Scientists have been able to reconstruct detailed information about the planet's past. Earth and the other planets in the Solar System formed 4.54 billion years ago[6] out of the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun. Initially molten, the outer layer of the planet Earth cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as the result of a Mars-sized object (sometimes called Theia) with about 10% of the Earth's mass[15] impacting the Earth in a glancing blow.[16] Some of this object's mass merged with the Earth and a portion was ejected into space, but enough material survived to form an orbiting moon.
Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice delivered by comets, produced the oceans.[14] The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago, and half a billion years later, the last common ancestor of all life existed.[17]
The development of photosynthesis allowed the Sun's energy to be harvested directly by life forms; the resultant oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere and resulted in a layer of ozone (a form of molecular oxygen [O3]) in the upper atmosphere. The incorporation of smaller cells within larger ones resulted in the development of complex cells called eukaryotes.[18] True multicellular organisms formed as cells within colonies became increasingly specialized. Aided by the absorption of harmful ultraviolet radiation by the ozone layer, life colonized the surface of Earth.[19]
As the surface continually reshaped itself, over hundreds of millions of years, continents formed and broke up. The continents migrated across the surface, occasionally combining to form a supercontinent. Roughly 750 million years ago (mya), the earliest known supercontinent, Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, 600–540 mya, then finally Pangaea, which broke apart 180 mya.[20]
Since the 1960s, it has been hypothesized that severe glacial action between 750 and 580 mya, during the Neoproterozoic, covered much of the planet in a sheet of ice. This hypothesis has been termed "Snowball Earth", and is of particular interest because it preceded the Cambrian explosion, when multicellular life forms began to proliferate.[21]
Following the Cambrian explosion, about 535 mya, there have been five mass extinctions.[22] The last extinction event occurred 65 mya, when a meteorite collision probably triggered the extinction of the (non-avian) dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared small animals such as mammals, which then resembled shrews. Over the past 65 million years, mammalian life has diversified, and several mya, an African ape-like animal gained the ability to stand upright.[23] This enabled tool use and encouraged communication that provided the nutrition and stimulation needed for a larger brain. The development of agriculture, and then civilization, allowed humans to influence the Earth in a short time span as no other life form had,[24] affecting both the nature and quantity of other life forms.
The present pattern of ice ages began about 40 mya, then intensified during the Pleistocene about 3 mya. The polar regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating every 40–100,000 years. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago
Composition and structure
Earth is a terrestrial planet, meaning that it is a rocky body, rather than a gas giant like Jupiter. It is the largest of the four solar terrestrial planets, both in terms of size and mass. Of these four planets, Earth also has the highest density, the highest surface gravity Shapeand the strongest magnetic field.[26]



Shape
The Earth's shape is very close to an oblate spheroid — a rounded shape with a bulge around the equator — although the precise shape (the geoid) varies from this by up to 100 meters.[27] The average diameter of the reference spheroid is about 12,742 km. More approximately the distance is 40,000 km/π because the meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris, France.[28]
The rotation of the Earth creates the equatorial bulge so that the equatorial diameter is 43 km larger than the pole to pole diameter.[29] The largest local deviations in the rocky surface of the Earth are Mount Everest (8,848 m above local sea level) and the Mariana Trench (10,911 m below local sea level). Hence compared to a perfect ellipsoid, the Earth has a tolerance of about one part in about 584, or 0.17%, which is less than the 0.22% tolerance allowed in billiard balls.[30] Because of the bulge, the feature farthest from the center of the Earth is actually Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador
Chemical composition

The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.98×1024 kg. It is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements. Due to mass segregation, the core region is believed to be primarily composed of iron (88.8%), with smaller amounts of nickel (5.8%), sulfur (4.5%), and less than 1% trace elements.[32]
The geochemist F. W. Clarke calculated that a little more than 47% of the Earth's crust consists of oxygen. The more common rock constituents of the Earth's crust are nearly all oxides; chlorine, sulfur and fluorine are the only important exceptions to this and their total amount in any rock is usually much less than 1%. The principal oxides are silica, alumina, iron oxides, lime, magnesia, potash and soda. The silica functions principally as an acid, forming silicates, and all the commonest minerals of igneous rocks are of this nature. From a computation based on 1,672 analyses of all kinds of rocks, Clarke deduced that 99.22% were composed of 11 oxides (see the table at right.) All the other constituents occur only in very small quantities.[33]
Internal structure


The interior of the Earth, like that of the other terrestrial planets, is chemically divided into layers. The Earth has an outer silicate solid crust, a highly viscous mantle, a liquid outer core that is much less viscous than the mantle, and a solid inner core. The crust is separated from the mantle by the Mohorovičić discontinuity, and the thickness of the crust varies: averaging 6 km under the oceans and 30–50 km on the continents.[34]
The geologic component layers of the Earth[35] are at the following depths below the surface:[36]

Tectonic plates

According to plate tectonics theory, the outermost part of the Earth's interior is made up of two layers: the lithosphere, comprising the crust, and the solidified uppermost part of the mantle. Below the lithosphere lies the asthenosphere, which forms the inner part of the mantle. The asthenosphere behaves like a superheated and extremely viscous liquid.[40The lithosphere essentially floats on the asthenosphere and is broken up into what are called tectonic plates. These plates are rigid segments that move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: convergent, divergent and transform. The last occurs where two plates move laterally relative to each other, creating a strike-slip fault. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation can occur along these plate boundaries.[41]
] Notable minor plates include the Indian Plate, the Arabian Plate, the Caribbean Plate, the Nazca Plate off the west coast of South America and the Scotia Plate in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The Australian Plate actually fused with Indian Plate between 50 and 55 million years ago. The fastest-moving plates are the oceanic plates, with the Cocos Plate advancing at a rate of 75 mm/yr[43] (3.0 in/yr) and the Pacific Plate moving 52–69 mm/yr (2.1–2.7 in/yr). At the other extreme, the slowest-moving plate is the Eurasian Plate, progressing at a typical rate of about 21 mm/yr (0.8 in/yr).[44]

Hydrosphere

The abundance of water on Earth's surface is a unique feature that distinguishes the "Blue Planet" from others in the solar system. The Earth's hydrosphere consists chiefly of the oceans, but technically includes all water surfaces in the world, including inland seas, lakes, rivers, and underground waters down to a depth of 2,000 m. The deepest underwater location is Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean with a depth of −10,911 m.[56][57] The average depth of the oceans is 3,794 m, more than five times the average height of the continents.[55]
The mass of the oceans is approximately 1.35×1018 metric tons, or about 1/4400 of the total mass of the Earth, and occupies a volume of 1.386×109 km³. If all of the land on Earth were spread evenly, water would rise to an altitude of more than 2.7 km.[58] About 97.5% of the water is saline, while the remaining 2.5% is fresh water. The majority of the fresh water, about 68.7%, is currently in the form of ice.[59]
About 3.5% of the total mass of the oceans consists of salt. Most of this salt was released from volcanic activity or extracted from cool, igneous rocks.[60] The oceans are also a reservoir of dissolved atmospheric gases, which are essential for the survival of many aquatic life forms.[61] Sea water has an important influence on the world's climate, with the oceans acting as a large heat reservoir.[62] Shifts in the oceanic temperature distribution can cause significant weather shifts, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.[63]