- The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. To put it into perspective, humans have only existed for 300,000 years, which is a tiny amount of time compared to how long the planet has been around for.
2. The Earth’s surface is mainly water! Earth is often considered the Blue Planet, because about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered, making it look very blue from outer space.
3. Our planet is the 5th largest in our solar system. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are bigger than Earth. While Earth may not win in size it is the only planet in the solar system with liquid water on the surface. The other planets are primarily made from rock, gas or both!
4. You could fit a million Earths in the Sun. Although we may think Earth is big, when comparing it to the size of the Sun, we are rather small. Can you imagine Earth being a million times bigger? Flights would certainly get very long!
5. Earth rotates at around 1000 miles an hour. We don’t feel the Earth itself spinning because we are held close to the Earth’s surface by gravity – that’s probably good because we would feel very dizzy moving that fast!
6. The average distance the Earth is from the Sun is 93 million miles. If we were to travel to the Sun by plane it would take almost 20 years to get there!
7. The Earth is NOT perfectly round! While the Earth appears to be a rounded globe, it’s actually closer to the shape of an ellipsoid. This is similar to a sphere but slightly larger around the middle, much like a rugby ball. This “bulge” around the equator is caused by the Earth’s spin and the effect of gravity.
8. The Earth is situated in the Milky Way. Earth, along with the Solar System, sits in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a galaxy – an isolated collection of around 200 billion stars and other material bound together by gravity. As everything else in space is constantly moving, the Milky Way is no different – it spins at a staggering speed of 130 miles per second!
