“Are we alone in the universe?”

 

Earth, though seemingly huge for us, is just a Lilliputian blue-green ball swimming around in the infinite lagoon of dark space. The fathomless darkness of this space often makes scientists stay up at night and question, “Are we alone in the universe?” Science fiction has jostled our imaginations with pictures of humans venturing on interstellar adventures and encountering aliens, of magical worlds hiding far away, and of robots that save humanity. 

In reality, however, no astronaut has officially bumped into an alien so far. The abysmal ocean of dark space hasn’t revealed any definitive signs of life yet. But there are clues. In a new study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, scientists documented the discovery of a biosignature gas on a distant exoplanet.

According to NASA, there is an exact habitat that life needs for its existence. If Earth, for example, were in place of Pluto, life wouldn’t exist here. Due to its large distance from the Sun, everything would freeze into a gigantic ice ball. 

On the other hand, if Earth were in place of Mercury, everything would vaporize into steam, like a big cauldron of boiling soup. Luckily, the distance Earth orbits the Sun is “just right” for water to remain a liquid. This distance from the Sun is called the “habitable zone” or the “Goldilocks zone.” It is a zone where the star is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.

Lately, scientists have been keeping an eye on an ultracool red dwarf star named TRAPPIST-1, which hosts a stellar system of seven Earth-sized planets circling it. TRAPPIST-1 is around 39 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius. Observations revealed that the star resembles a miniature version of our solar system. 

If hosting seven gigantic planets wasn’t too exhausting, the small star is also notoriously active. Roughly six times per day, it erupts with energy bursts, which can threaten the planetary atmospheres within the system and obstruct scientists’ observations.

The TRAPPIST system will comfortably fit inside the orbit of planet Mercury, researchers say. A year for any given TRAPPIST planet will last mere days on Earth. In this study, lead author and scientist from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Sukrit Ranjan, presented a detailed analysis of several potential scenarios for what the planet’s atmosphere and surface may be like. "The basic thesis for TRAPPIST-1e is this: If it has an atmosphere, it's habitable. But right now, the first-order question must be, 'Does an atmosphere even exist?’" Ranjan speculated, according to a press release.

For investigation, scientists locked NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, instrument at the TRAPPIST system. During the transit, starlight was observed filtering through the planet’s atmosphere. 

But the most stunning observation, perhaps, was the discovery of hints that indicated traces of methane. “We reported hints of methane, but the question is, 'is the methane attributable to molecules in the atmosphere of the planet or in the host star?'" Ranjan reflected. The planet, named TRAPPIST-1e, resembled Saturn's methane-rich moon Titan.

These ideas sound intriguing, but Ranjan says, more rigorous studies are needed to determine whether TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere at all or the hints of methane are linked to the host star. "These observations will allow us to separate what the star is doing from what is going on in the planet's atmosphere – should it have one," Ranjan clarified.   

-Neha Bhatia

NASA Robot Unexpectedly Found an 80-Centimeter Rock on Mars That Most Likely Wasn’t From the Planet

 

The Pale Blue Dot

     

Background    

The 4.5 billion-year-old Earth is the only known astronomical object to harbor life, giving rise to billions of species of stunning diversity, including ours, Homo sapiens. It has formed the backdrop of an estimated 110 billion human lives.

At 13.1 septillion pounds and 25,000 miles in circumference, the third planet from the sun long formed the horizon of all human experience and knowledge (watch overview).

Recent discoveries have revealed our home planet’s relative size and location in the universe: a pale blue dot within the Orion Spur, located 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of 100,000 galaxies within the Laniakea Supercluster.

Formation

Early Earth is theorized to have formed alongside the other planets within a solar nebula, where a massive cloud of spinning, interstellar gas and dust contracted under its own gravity and flattened into a hot disk (watch visualization).

The core of the disk became dense with lighter elements like hydrogen, eventually heating up and triggering nuclear fusion, forming the sun. Solar wind pushed lighter elements farther out into the system, while heavier metals like iron gathered into increasingly larger masses known as planetesimals in a process called accretion to form the Earth and other inner rocky planets.

As the protoplanet grew, heat from the colliding material and radioactive decay differentiated Earth’s heavier iron-rich core from its lighter rocky mantle, giving rise to Earth’s magnetic field and long-term stability. Various models suggest Earth’s formation took tens of millions of years.

Two billion years later, Earth changed dramatically when cyanobacteria, a microbe, evolved to generate energy from sunlight (i.e., photosynthesis) and release oxygen as a byproduct into the atmosphere during the Great Oxidation Event.

Structure and Composition

Earth is the densest planet in the solar system and the most massive of the four rocky terrestrials. Shaped into a sphere by gravity, Earth is flattened at its poles and bulges at its equator due to its roughly 1,000-mile-per-hour eastward spin (Jupiter spins 28 times faster).

By analyzing seismic waves, researchers theorize that a solid, 9,800-degree Fahrenheit inner core is surrounded by an outer core of liquid iron and nickel—common elements that consolidate into solids at high pressures.

Above the core, a slow-moving rocky mantle moves the crust's tectonic plates, causing volcanoes and earthquakes (see overview).

Earth’s spin combines with the core’s electrical conductivity and extreme heat to produce a magnetic field that protects its surface from damaging solar winds, cosmic rays, and deep space radiation. This so-called geodynamo process is expected to last for billions of years.

Surface and Climate

Situated within the solar system’s “Goldilocks zone,” Earth is the only planet with conditions able to sustain liquid surface water, key to the formation of life. Roughly 71% of its surface is water; the rest is land. An estimated 300 million planets in our galaxy are located in similar zones.

The Earth’s five-layer atmosphere traps solar energy and maintains an average global surface temperature of 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Roughly 21% is oxygen, crucial for respiration but highly flammable. Nitrogen (78%) dilutes the oxygen and prevents rapid combustion.

Seasons result from the Earth’s 23.4-degree tilt in relation to the orbital plane. Ice ages last millions of years and result from shifting climatic conditions—like ocean currents and the position of tectonic plates—that drop average temperatures by double digits.

We live amid the fifth major ice age, though we are in the middle of a warmer interglacial period that began 11,000 years ago.

 -1440 Daily Digest

Cosmologist Janna Levin on the Musical Nature of the Universe

 

Song sections repeat, but why? When we rhyme, we repeat a sound, but why? Martin Luther King Jr. repeated the phrase, “I have a dream,” but why?

Philosophers and writers—Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Vico, Woolf, and McLuhan, to name a few—have agonized over the roots of repetition. They discuss past lives, time spirals, eternal returns, and the possibility that repetition doesn’t even exist. All of which is fascinating, but if I’d answered my student’s question—“Why repeat stuff?”—with, “Well, class, gather ’round. Nietzsche once said . . . ,” they’d have walked out.

I wondered if a universal answer might come from the universe itself. So I asked an expert.

It’s Space Time

I met Janna Levin at a grand opening party for a mutual friend’s robot factory. She’s a cosmologist, the Claire Tow Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, a Guggenheim Fellow, chair and director of sciences at Pioneer Works, and author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, which tells the story of the fifty-year search for the sound of colliding black holes as they “slosh in space-time . . . like waves on an ocean.”

Songwriters and astrophysicists have an affinity for repetition. It’s frequently used as a tool in music, but for astronomers, there seems to be an assumption that repetition is indicative of intelligent life—or at least that the possibility can’t be taken off the table.

Absolutely. One of the things SETI—the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence—does is that they look for very regular mathematical signals because they assume that nature won’t provide such a thing—nature’s messy, and so nature can’t do anything so regular. So if you find an incredibly regular signal, you’re hoping that it was sent by somebody who controls their environment, you know, who made it go that way.

What does it say about us that we’re so intrigued by repeated information?

I am a big believer that we inherit mathematical structures because math made us. Evolution is guided by forces of nature— that’s how we evolve—and those forces, not surprisingly, leave an imprint in the structure of our minds. What else is going to be left there, something magic, some magic thing, you know?

So what do we have but the forces prescribed in our minds, which are certain structures, how the neurons connect? Of course they have to be mathematical. And in some larger, genetic sense of who our family was, who our parents were—our parents were the laws of physics. And in our minds, it’s encoded there. And we’re discovering the structure of our minds.

There are also communications within the animal kingdom, like birdcalls, that repeat. And the repetition corrects for errors. So, you know, if you didn’t get it the first time, you get it the next time . . .

We want to be unique in language, but we also want to be repetitive enough that you recognize the words. I want to say those words to you over and over and over again, like with children. And then they acquire language. You need the repetition first to understand what the words mean, but then I want to be able to say something unique by assembling those words in a certain way.

That’s a basic theory of songwriting—choruses that repeat and teach themselves
to the listener . . .

Right. LIGO [the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory that has recorded the sound of black holes colliding] has a real hard time detecting something that only bursts once. It has to repeat for it to be able to pull it out. In fact, one of the things we really hope from LIGO going forward is that it will hear something for long enough that it’ll be able to hear repetitions—that’s exactly what it’s going to want to look for. And those repetitions will allow it to identify something.

That’s what I’m talking about!

That’s what science is about—reproducibility, experimentation, the fact that somebody else can do it and get the same answer. I was talking to someone from Oxford who said, “Look, this is a real experiment: In your mind, imagine a circle, divide it by the diameter. You have just derived the formula for pi. That is an experiment. And anybody can do the same experiment in their minds and get exactly the same answer.”

I consider that to be as tangible as anything. It might not mean that I physically, externally, took out a tape measure, right? But that is as real to me as if I had, and in some sense it’s more real because my tape measure is imperfect, but in my mind, it’s perfect. How is that not real? That’s real.

So, repetition, whether from the same source or the same computation, makes something real.

I think a lot of people who are as inclined as I am toward abstraction struggle with “reality” because it’s less real. “What do you mean that chair was blue? I think it’s persimmon-colored.” “I think it’s lavender.” Like, there’s less reality in reality than there is in our minds. So it’s quite comforting to know that if you’re from Bangladesh, 200 years ago, and you did the same pi thought experiment, it’s 3.14159 et cetera. There’s a sense of connectedness that’s very profound. Very profound. So I think if you think of repetition as an evolutionary trait, then it makes sense that we have it.

“If repetition sounds boring to you, just look up at the night sky. See? Not boring!”

I’ll always wish I had a better answer to give my disillusioned student that day, and maybe that’s what regret is—the ache of our internal math not checking out.

And yet, strangely, it’s worked out for both of us: she does, in fact, repeat choruses now, and is finding a lot of success in her career; and that same question—”Why repeat stuff?”—repeats, every semester, like clockwork, or bird calls, seasons, pulsars, the calculations of pi, or yes, the chorus of a song.

-Mike Errico, Music Lyrics and Life

Comment

It was the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (c. 570 B.C. - 495 B.C.E.) who also spoke of "a music of the spheres." He believed the "motions of the heavenly bodies, with just the right ratios of their distances from the [sun], made pleasant music."

Boeing Starliner astronauts have now been in space more than 60 days with no end in sight

 

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — two veteran NASA astronauts piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — have now been in space for 63 days, roughly seven weeks longer than initially expected.

There is still no clear return date in sight, and NASA is now making clear that the astronauts may not come home on Starliner at all.

SpaceX, Boeing’s rival under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, may be tapped to bring Williams and Wilmore home instead. The move could potentially extend the astronauts’ stay on the International Space Station by another six months, pushing their return into 2025, agency officials said in a news conference Wednesday.

The comments from NASA leaders indicate a stunning change of tone for the space agency. Until now, officials have repeatedly indicated that Williams and Wilmore were likely to return home on Starliner, and a backup scenario involving Crew Dragon was mentioned as a mere possibility. Wednesday’s update, however, suggests the SpaceX vehicle is rapidly becoming a serious option.

“I would say that our chances of an uncrewed Starliner return have increased a little bit based on where things have gone over the last week or two,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, referring to NASA’s internal review processes that needs to be completed before a return date for Starliner is set. “But again, new data coming in, new analysis, different discussion — we could find ourselves shift in another way.”

Boeing’s propulsion woes

CNN confirmed on Tuesday that NASA has not yet started a “flight readiness review” for the Starliner crew’s return from the space station. The agency had said on July 26 that it would begin that process in the first couple days of August.

But Boeing and NASA teams are still working on a potential return date for the mission that launched June 5, as officials evaluate testing data and conduct analyses about the propulsion issues and helium leaks that hampered the first leg of the Starliner capsule’s flight.

-CNN

And do you remember

Ripped from Space by Glen Brown

From May 19, 1991 to March 25, 1992, (311 Days) Sergei Krikalev, a cosmonaut, remained in space because there was not enough money to bring him back to earth. During that time, the Soviet Union collapsed, and a new Russia was born. For this, Krikalev is sometimes called The Last Soviet Citizen.…After a 10-month marathon… the fellow who couldn’t even score some honey was finally home.   —from a news story

When Sergei Krikalev returned 
to the barren steppes of Kazakhstan, 
reeking of horseradish and lemons, 
he knew he had traveled the length 
of more than one revolution,
that he had come back a galactic victim  

of economic relativity to a world

now bewitched by a game of Wolfenstein  
instead of a game of ninepin, 
while he had orbited 200 miles above the earth.

When he heard the yoke of communism had broken,  
that his space station nearly sold  
to the highest bidder,  
his knees locked together; his eyes rolled back. 

So, they set him down in a wooden chair 
to take his pulse and wipe his brow.
And after they weatherproofed him  
with fur to riffle back the wind  
that gray day in spring,  
he rubbed his eyes like Rip Van Winkle,  
not knowing another revolution had taken place 
where he now found himself whilst the lone loyal subject  
lost in liberty, moonstruck with the thought  
that he could finally score 
honey in some place unlike heaven.

“Ripped from Space” was originally published in Elf in 1993 and later in Hum If You Can't Sing, a book by Glen Brown in 2023.
  

This is the moment aurora chasers have been waiting for

 

For the first time since 2003, an extreme geomagnetic storm — the most severe of its kind — hit Earth on Friday evening. Beautiful green, purple and red dancing aurora displays, also known as the northern lights, were spotted across Europe and very low latitudes in the United States, as far south as Alabama and Florida.
 
If you missed Friday’s show, more geomagnetic activity is expected to continue on Saturday and Sunday. As of Saturday morning, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast called for another strong geomagnetic storm on Saturday night, although slightly weaker than Friday’s show.

The aurora could be visible as far south as Illinois and Oregon with the naked eye, but could be seen farther south with a camera… NOAA scientists also warned of potential disruptions in satellite and radio communications, as well as to the electricity grid.
 
On Saturday morning, NOAA said in a statement that there were “reports of power grid irregularities and degradation to high-frequency communications and GPS.” Starlink, the satellite internet company, said it was “experiencing degraded service” on Saturday morning. A team is investigating the cause, but the satellites have been affected in the past by geomagnetic storms.
 
Geomagnetic storms are created when a surge of particles and plasma from the sun temporarily jostle Earth’s magnetosphere, sometimes resulting in the northern lights or technology disruptions. NOAA categorizes geomagnetic storms on a scale of G1 to G5, with G5 the most severe.

The agency anticipated a severe G4 storm, but the activity exceeded forecasts on Friday. Around 7 p.m. Eastern time, the storm reached the G5 level. The last time a storm of this severity hit Earth was in October 2003, resulting in power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.
 
The storm continued for several hours at varying strengths through Saturday morning, when it again hit a G5 level. NOAA calls for a strong (G3) level through Saturday, although the forecast may be updated as more solar activity arrives at Earth.
 
Forecasts anticipated the severe storm would bring aurora displays unusually far south in the Northern Hemisphere. The northern lights filled skies in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, southern Switzerland, London and India. In the United States, people reported sightings along Virginia’s Blue Ridge Parkway, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Mexico, Mississippi, Florida and Texas…

-Washington Post

Andromeda, The Galaxy That Will Collide With The Milky Way, Is Already Visible To The Naked Eye In The Sky

 

Our galaxy is going to crash into Andromeda. Now is the start of the best time of year to see it with your own eyes.   

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is going to crash into Andromeda, which is twice as big as it is. Due to gravity, they are moving toward each other at a speed of 113 kilometers per second. They are expected to crash into each other in 4.5 billion years, but their outer layers have already started to merge.

At the same time, people on Earth can see Andromeda, which is also called Messier 31, with their own eyes. The spiral galaxy can be seen in the night sky in both hemispheres of our planet from mid-August to November. Andromeda is 2.5 million light-years away, but it only takes up a quarter of a degree in the sky. NASA says that this is the same as half the width of a full moon.

When will we be able to see the Andromeda galaxy?

Because it is so far away, Andromeda has a soft glow. So, to see it with the naked eye, it’s not enough to have a clear sky. There also needs to be little light on the moon’s surface and no bright spots.

Because of this, you can already see the galaxy on these dates, but it’s best to look at it on nights close to the new moon. The last week of August is when this stage will happen ( from August 24 to 31 ). Also, look for a place with little light pollution, like outside of a city or in the country.

Where in the sky is Andromeda?

Around midnight in Peru and other places in the southern hemisphere (Argentina, Chile, etc.), the galaxy rises above the horizon and moves northeast. In the northern hemisphere, it rises hours earlier (Mexico, Spain, etc.).

It is near the Andromeda constellation, which is how it got its name. It is right at the top of the character’s “belt.” The Pegasus constellation, whose stars form a square, can be used to find the galaxy. Between 2:00 am and 3:00 am, when it is in the north and high in the sky, is the best time to see Andromeda.

With the naked eye, it looks like a small cloud with some details, but with binoculars, you can see the grandeur of this nearby galaxy.

Andromeda has an apparent magnitude of 3.5, which means it is brighter than most visible stars (magnitudes 4 to 6), but not as bright as planets that can be seen with the naked eye. (values between 1 and less than 0). Because of this, experts in astronomical observation say that anyone who wants to look for Andromeda or anything else in deep space should first try to get used to the darkness of the sky. 

-Ancientzen

 

Mind-Blowing Facts About The Earth That We All Take For Granted (Science Sensei)

 

When it comes to our planet known as Earth, it seems we take everything we see for granted. Some of this wasn’t always here and we were not always able to live, as humans, on the planet. It took billions of years to get us to this position in time. There are some absolutely mind-blowing facts about the Earth that we overlook.

It’s understandable that we appreciate it, as we’ve never known any version of the Earth that isn’t what we see today. Therefore, we cannot really imagine how things could be different. The human brain, for example, cannot possibly imagine a world or period where it does not exist. It is physically impossible to imagine not existing.

This is one of the prime reasons why overlooking amazing things about the Earth is so common. Yet we’ve seen a growing interest in the Earth the last decade or so due to science becoming “cool” again. The talk about nature and climate change has only intensified this interest too.

Yet at the end of the day, even those that care about the Earth and love to know about it will not know or overlook major things about it.

Today, we’re here to help educate the masses on Mother Earth and how many things came to be. These mind-blowing facts about the Earth will be known by some, but others will likely only be known by a fraction of humans today. That said, sit back and relax as we take a journey to inform you of the most amazing facts about our Planet today. Enjoy!

How Long Could A Human Last Outside Earth’s Atmosphere Unprotected.

Hanging out unprotected in space isn’t that hard, right? Sure it’s cold, but the sun comes out each day and heats the Earth, so it could clear heat you up too, right? Actually, that is not how this works. The average time a human can last in space unprotected is after about 2 minutes. This is not just because space does not contain oxygen but also because it’s incredibly cold.

Although the sun comes out, it does not warm space, but rather, the Earth warms itself from the sun’s rays. We have an atmosphere and so much that is responsible for this. Plus, the whole breathing thing is useful for humans too. We are incredibly lucky to live on a planet that can do all of this for us, providing the key ingredient for us to breathe and remain warm in spite of the cold space around us.

There Are Not 24 Hours In An Earth Day.

Outside of the Earth on other planets, the days could be longer or shorter. In the movie Interstellar, there was a moment when some of the characters were gone for what amounted to a few hours on a planet. It turned out that compared to the Earth’s time, this had been several years. This is incredible but possible to see depending on the size of the planet visited.

Yet we should not measure our Earth’s time as we know it when trying to compare it to other planets. There are not 24 hours in an Earth day. Our actual Earth day is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. We simply rounded it out to a 24-hour day because it is easier to remember. Therefore, we’ve been stealing time from various Earth days for centuries.

Earth Is The Only Planet In Our Solar System With Plate Tectonics.

One of the most forgotten parts about the Earth is how perfect it is for human life or, well, a life of any kind. If you wanted to thank your lucky stars for this, it might be better to thank the plate tectonics beneath you. Earth is the only planet in our solar system that has them. For those unaware, any planet that does not have them cannot recycle carbon correctly.

These plates consume the carbon for us and then send it out to the Earth to properly make everything work. Without them, this does not occur and planets simply overheat as a result. Venus is a perfect example of what happens when planets overheat. If the Earth was like Venus, human life could never exist here…

The Sun Is Pretty Massive And The Earth Is Nothing In Comparison.

For centuries, people thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. It turns out, that the sun is a very important part of our lives each day, and it’s the technical center. Planets rotate around it and we luckily have managed to live today as a result of the sun’s heat. The sun is actually a star and on top of this, it happens to be one of the smallest stars we know of today.

Yet the sun is absolutely massive. The Earth happens to measure out at 3,958.8 miles in size.

Meanwhile, the Sun measures out at 432,170 miles. Scientists say to understand this, think of the typical front door at your home. The Sun is the door while the Earth is a nickel sitting outside the door. That is the size difference!

75% Of Earth’s Animal Species Could Be Extinct In A Few Hundred Years.

With changing climate and evolutionary issues, animals have gone extinct for several reasons over the years. Sometimes, poaching did them in or simply an animal was hunted for food by humans until there were no more. Then you have some animals that were very dumb and died off for several ignorant reasons.

Whatever the reason for extinction, several animals are already gone. However, more are set to go too. It is said that with the pattern the Earth is going on today, up to 75% of the world’s known animal species will be gone in the next 300 years. This is likely due to all the aforementioned reasons above. However, there are some animals we do know of yet that very well could survive. On top of this, some animals could very well evolve into another type of animal by that point too…

The Sahara Helps The Amazon Rainforest Every Day.

In one of the weirdest parts about our Earth, we somehow have it helping itself from two places thousands of miles apart from one another. The Sahara Desert, known for being a dry and hot place where people beg for water happens to be the very reason the Amazon Rainforest can still operate the way it does to this day.

The way the Sahara does this is by supplying nutrient-rich dust. In fact, each year the Sahara provides 40 million tons of this dust to the Amazon. It is transported there across the ocean via the wind. It ends up in the Amazon where it helps the Amazon continue to grow. Without this dust, we would not have the Amazon. Without the Amazon Rainforest, we would not have the world’s largest supplier of oxygen.

 

The Temp At The Earth’s Core Is Almost As Hot As The Surface Of The Sun.

We’ve already mentioned key connections the Sun has to the Earth, in particular, the size differences. The surface of our Sun is incredibly hot and helps to make Venus and Mercury hundreds to thousands of degrees. Yet the Earth can get incredibly hot the closure you get to its core. The center of the Earth reaches the temperature of 5,500 degrees Celsius, which is 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The surface of the sun measures out to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 5,600 degrees Celsius. This is only 100 degrees difference. Of course, the Sun reaches much higher than this the further in you go. Such as 27,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the center. Thus, we’re lucky that the whole “dig to the center” thing did not happen.

90% Of All Volcanic Activity Happens In The Ocean.

While there are several volcanoes all around the world, most of them are not active. However, there are several that are still going off to this day. Yet most of those volcanoes are actually in the Earth’s oceans. That’s right, most of the world’s active volcanoes go off underwater and you rarely, if ever, hear about it.

Some could be erupting this very second! Most of them do not cause any earthquake issues or problems in the ocean, so it is rare that you’ll see an underwater volcano eruption make the morning news. However, they do create new formations due to the water helping to cool the lava once it comes out…

There’s A Lot Of Active Volcanoes.

While it is true that most active volcanoes are underwater, there are several volcanoes that are active all over the world today. At last count, the number was a little over 1,500 actives. Some go off all the time while others may do so every few months, a few years, etc. The big ones, known as super volcanoes, are the ones scientists truly worry about.

They actually have the power to shape the Earth and cause various problems. Some could flood the world with ash and send us into a new Ice Age. 6 of these super volcanoes are currently “sleeping.” However, scientists monitor these regularly to see if a change is coming…

Dinosaurs Could Never Exist Today And Humans Couldn’t Exist In Their Time.

Millions of years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, something very special was happening on our amazing planet. We were actually getting an immense level of oxygen. The Earth’s atmosphere was not really affected by humans or even random fires. Therefore, the climate could contain far more oxygen. This special amount allowed reptiles and amphibians to go to larger sizes, as well as many birds.

Today, the oxygen is nowhere near what it was back then, thus keeping them much smaller. Humans, however, could not live among the dinosaurs at all. Our bodies struggle with oxygen levels at the 0.1 to 0.5 bar and up. Oxygen levels were much higher during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Mesozoic periods. Humans in this level would experience massive lung damage and pressures like this could possibly make our heads explode.

Tons Of Meteorites Hit The Earth Every Single Day.

You may assume when we say “tons” that it is being used in the conversation or colloquial sense. However, we’re actually using literal terms here. It is confirmed that meteorites come into the Earth’s atmosphere every single day. Sometimes we have government officials who take care of them before they reach us. Most of the time, however, the Earth handles this without human interaction.

We see around 100 tons of meteorites enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Out of these, most end up being dust by the time they make it here. Some small meteorites may make it through, yet they don’t tend to do much if any damage. Despite this, you may have heard of stories where people reported a small meteorite hit their home or car. It’s not really easy to control where the things land sadly…

Look Out For Space Junk!

Due to all the things we put in space combined with the already problematic contents of space itself, NASA has managed to look into this. They were able to check all of the contents that either entered or re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and found that at least one piece of Space Junk comes down to Earth each and every day.

Of course, this is a law of averages. There very well could be zero on a certain day and two of them on the next day. However, the fact that we have to watch out daily for space junk is a bit weird. It’s one of those mind-blowing facts about the Earth that we should probably work to fix…

Don’t Be So Salty.

While we all know that the Earth is quite massive and contains a ton of water on it, do you know how much is considered saltwater vs freshwater? To help you out, every single Ocean fall under saltwater. This also involves several “seas” and partially even includes lakes & rivers.

Meanwhile, streams, as well as many lakes and rivers, fall under freshwater. Despite this, the salt vs fresh ratio is not even close. Currently, the Earth is made up of an impressive 97% saltwater versus 3% freshwater. Mind-blowing facts about the Earth like this show why it is so important for humans to take care of these freshwater places around the world.

Humans Cause More Extinctions Than We Think.

It is quite clear that humans are the very reason why so many animals are gone today. Mass extinctions of major animals, as well as those that will one day die as a result of humans, are quite vast. However, the same occurs with plants too. While these things are caused by hunting, removing, or cutting down these living beings…it’s also due to clear climate change.

Due to all these acts by humans, it is estimated around 2 to 4 species of either animal or plant go extinct every single hour of the day. These animals or plants could be on land, in the sea, and may not even be some we actually know about…

We’re All Born Stars.

Humans are made of the stars, essentially. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a brilliant way of telling people about this. He is quoted so eloquently saying: “The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”

Gravity Isn’t The Same For All Of Us.

The Earth is always on the move, which causes some technically weird situations. As a result of the move, you can and likely will weigh a bit more at the poles of the Earth than you would weigh at the Equator. This is not just because at the Equator line you’ll be sweating off a lot of water weight either. This is one of the craziest, mind-blowing facts about the Earth we found.

Scientists have looked into this and believe they have the answer as to why weight and ultimately gravity differ in these spots on the Earth. It is said that convection currents from Earth’s mantle and/or the Earth reacting to the pressure of eliminating ice on its surface after it melts is the root cause of the gravity difference.

That’s A Big Mountain Range.

We may see massive mountains all over the world with Mount Everest being the believed tallest. However, it’s actually not the tallest rather, more of it is on land. There are underwater mountains that are quite tall. When it comes to a mountain range, however, that is another story entirely. The largest was assumed to be the Andes in South America, which is 4,350 miles long.

However, the longest mountain range is much bigger than this and runs 40,389 miles around the world. Yet again, it has to do with an underwater situation. We call it the Mid-Ocean Ridge, which was formed by magma that rose to fill gaps that formed as the Earth’s plates shifted over the years. The mountains here have a depth of 8,200 feet below the water’s surface.

You’re Moving Through Space Incredibly Fast.

The Earth is moving quickly and we mean VERY quickly. Currently, we’re moving through space at around 66,000 miles per hour around our sun. While this could be seen as incredibly fast, it has nothing on the speed of our solar system. It’s actually moving at a rate of 560,000 miles per hour.

This begs the question if we’re moving so fast here on Earth and our solar system is also moving so quick…how do we never feel this? The Earth has moved like this for a long time and our bodies have gotten used to it. Yet this movement is key for the solar system. We’re in a constant state of motion, so we do not feel our solar system’s speed through the universe…

We’re Also Spinning Incredibly Fast Too.

After centuries of study on the Earth, scientists have now been capable of finding out that the Earth spins a little over 1,000 miles per hour. However, the speed the Earth spins at may differ depending on where you’re located on the planet. For example, if you’re located on one of the poles then you’re basically rotating in place.

This is similar to spinning a basketball on your finger. Notice how your finger can remain in place and it’ll always keep to the area it first began spinning on. Since the Earth has a bulge around the Equator, the people here are spinning the fastest of everyone on the planet. It’s also common to see the mid-section of a ball moving the fastest too…

The North & South Poles Switch Places Every 200,000 To 300,000 Years.

We all know about the North and South Poles, right? While both are cold places to be, the locations of the poles actually trade places more often than you might think. These magnetic poles move thanks to Earth’s magnetic fields pushing against each other. Scientists found that these poles will usually switch up every 200,000 to 300,000 years.

It’s sctually been more than twice as long since the Earth’s most recent switch, however. The reason(s) for the trading not taking place are debatable but what this does mean is that a switch could cause some weird issues. Some believe it’ll be Doomsday. However, if nothing else, you’ll at least need to get another compass. Someone should also alert Santa!

The Earth Is Made Up Mostly Of Water, But How Much?

A lot of people wonder how, when looking at the Earth, we could possibly be made up of more water than land. In reality, we do have a lot of land on the planet. Even if it’s underwater at times, it’s still there. Thus, the world is completely made up of land too. The thing is, we tend to go with what takes over. If the land is underwater, the water now takes top billing essentially.

How much of Earth is water versus land, in this case? 

The answer is 71%. Seawater rising around the world has led to the 1% rise since we were kids. Eventually, the Earth may be more than 80% water! While not considered among the mind-blowing facts about the Earth, it is impressive to see how many humans can live in a world where we have less land compared to the fish to live on.

The Earth’s Rotation Has Slowed Down, Eliminating Some Possible Age.

We now know that the Earth’s rotation has been slowing down but it’s certainly not by much. In fact, we as humans could not tell at all really. It is simply impossible for us to do so. The question is, why? Apparently, it has a lot to do with the tides interacting with continents and their shores. It somehow creates friction and has been changing up the speed of our rotation.

As an added benefit to the Earth, she has not aged the amount she would have if the Earth remained at the speed it used to be at. In total, the Earth has seen 2,740 years and 6 hours eliminated from our gradually slowing rotation. This factors out to about 1.78 milliseconds per day each century…

The Hottest & Coldest Temperatures On Record.

While the Earth has been both severely hot and severely cold, humans have not been around when the world was in these developmental periods. We also were not alive during the mass extinctions, at least in the form we’re in today. However, we have been around and put through some absolutely insane conditions.

The hottest day on record occurred in Death Valley and reached a temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit in 1913. However, the coldest day on record occurred in Antarctica where the temperature reached -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit in 2013. Both temps may never be beaten, at least, we hope they aren’t.

Three People Have Visited The Deepest Part Of Earth Compared To 3,000 Who Have Visited The Highest.

It makes sense to assume that visiting either the highest or lowest part of our planet is not something most of us truly want to do. However, you’d be surprised to learn that thousands of people have managed to reach the top of our world. The tallest sits at the peak of Mount Everest. It has played host to about 3,100 climbers thus far. However, 220 died so far in the attempt.

Meanwhile, the lowest portion of the Earth is located in the Mariana Trench and is known as the Challenger Deep. It extends 36,000 feet below the surface of the Ocean. However, only 3 people have managed to get here with well-known movie director/writer James Cameron being one of those three.

A Single Glacier Is Responsible For Contributing 10% Of All Earth’s Meltwater.

As it currently stands, the world’s fresh water is contained in a slew of places with glaciers being the most common. Ice caps and glaciers melt due to climate change, which results in sea levels rising. The biggest is known as the Canadian Arctic Glacier and is technically the size of New York City. This is the glacier that contributes the most meltwater annually.

From 2004 to 2009, studies by scientists were able to discover that the water this one glacier lost was equal to nearly 75% of the water volume of Lake Erie. Understand that for just a second. One glacier contributed enough to fill an entire great lake…

Earthquakes Can Technically Produce Gold.

We all know that Earthquakes can be destructive and break the very foundation of Earth beneath us. However, they can also technically make you rich too. This sounds confusing, but we’ll explain ourselves here. Several elements are inside the Earth, rare elements combined with commonly seen ones. One of these happens to be gold.

It is usually located about six miles below the Earth’s surface. When earthquakes happen, water inside faults will vaporize and mix with silica to form gold. However, you should not try to just cause an earthquake as a get-rich-quick scheme. This process takes 100,000 years to create gold worth mining for you…

How Small We Really Are.

When you start to think about the Earth, truly think about it, you’ll find that we as human beings lucked out a lot. Start to compare us with the overall universe, however, and you’ll realize just how small we truly are. However, in a somewhat fun cosmic win, we now know that the Earth has more trees than there are stars in the overall Milky Way Galaxy.

This is where our winning ends, sadly. Outside of our galaxy, several more stars exist. There are so many that you could count up every possible grain of sand on Earth. Even though this would likely be impossible. Pretending you did, you’d still be seeing a number dwarfed by the number of stars in the overall universe.

The Great Barrier Reef Is The Largest Living Structure On Earth, For Now.

While it is sad to say that various coral reefs have changed over time, with many even dying from multiple issues, nothing beats the Great Barrier Reef. When you talk about things you can see from space, this very Reef is one of those things. It is absolutely breathtaking in person but the images of it are amazing too.

Located right off the coast of Queensland, Australia, this Reef measures around 1,429 miles long. To equate this size, it is the same as the state of Texas or the country of Japan fully put together. The wildlife here is absolutely amazing as the Great Barrier Reef hosts 1,625 types of fish, 100 species of jellyfish, and 600 types of both soft and hard corals. All of this is inside a Reef composed of almost 3,000 smaller reefs.

The Earth Isn’t Perfectly Round.

Don’t assume we’re somehow in support of the infamous Flat-Earth Theory. At Science Sensei, we base our views on the current evidence and it has been known for a long time that the world isn’t flat. However, it might be more recent that we’ve found that it also isn’t perfectly round either. Currently, the Earth is spinning at about 1,000 MPH which gives the planet a somewhat “oblate spheroid shape,” if you will.

This is not a perfect sphere because of a clear bulge around the Equator. It looks perfectly round from space in the images. However, when the distance from the sea level to the Earth’s core at the Equator was measured, it was found to be 13 miles greater than at the Earth’s poles. In layman’s terms, Earth’s belly is sticking out like your uncle’s on Thanksgiving.

Antarctica Contains 90% Of The World’s Ice And 70% Of Its Water.

We all know Antarctica is unbearably cold and obviously known as the continent of ice. To no one’s shock, this continent is home to 90% of the world’s overall ice. This is a massive thing to consider in that just one place contains so much. Due to this, it should also not be a shock that the continent also contains 70% of the world’s water too.

The ice measures out to 15,748 thick in certain places. On top of this, if the entire place were to melt somehow, the world’s oceans would end up rising around 187 feet. We’d truly be a blue planet then. Funny enough, this place is also the home to Drys Valleys, where it has not rained in 2 million years…

The Magnetic Field Aid.

Most of the time, when you think about mind-blowing facts about the Earth, you don’t really consider the magnetic field that the planet has. However, this very field is a major reason we’re still alive today. It helps us keep a lot of things away from the Earth itself and works as shielding of sorts to protect us.

One of the biggest things it does is protect us from solar storms or solar winds. If you were in space at the time of one, you’d likely be dead or end up dying from radiation poisoning eventually. We’re helped in that our magnetic field reflects this and keeps us safe from them. It aids us much more than this, but we’d need an entire article on the magnetic field to tell you about it all.

We’ve Only Explored 5% Of Our Oceans And Its Contents.

It has long been said that we know more about outer space than about our own oceans. This is not entirely inaccurate if we’re being fair. We do know a lot about space but it would be hard to say we know more than 1% of it due to the vastness of it all. Yet our time on Earth with the oceans has not fared much better. We only know 5% max about our world’s oceans.

This involves not knowing about things like land and contents under the sea as well as multiple sea creatures. On top of this, it’s actually hard to map for us. While we can create maps of up to three miles in resolution, we can’t go further due to radio waves that interfere with documenting things via scan. This means we have a better map of Mars & the Moon than our own oceans.

Our Moon Gave Up Quite A Lot, It Appears.

We all know now that, according to the Big Bang Theory, the universe was formed through everything shaping itself over billions of years. During this, we saw planets colliding, which also included moons. During one of these encounters with our own moon, we were given a few gifts. First, it gave us a little bit more mass as we took a part of the moon with us.

Yet we also took some of its magnetism to add to our own magnetic field. This is a major reason the Earth’s magnetic field is so impressive. It’s not entirely shocking to see gifts through colliding, as asteroids gave us part of our water too Science has found that we may have once had two moons too. The two collided and now we see what we see today. Could our Moon also have an actual atmosphere if not for us and other collisions? Perhaps.

The Only Tolerable Atmosphere.

Looking at how lucky we became; it is not a wonder why some alien species may not consider us worth visiting. They may assume we did not have to do much at all to live. To be honest, they would not be that far off. The Earth, as well as everything that happened to it, gave us this amazing planet that eventually became possible for human life. The biggest of all of this is our atmosphere.

It is so thick that outer space and its nothingness cannot randomly take away our precious oxygen resource or cool the Earth to a ball of ice. Mars and the Moon apparently at one point did have a true atmosphere before collisions with the Earth. We took a little from everyone to eventually form a planet that can sustain life, with an atmosphere type found nowhere else in our solar system.

There Are Actually 8 Continents, Not 7.

Growing up in school, we were always taught about our major continents. This involved North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and Europe. However, we were not taught correctly. You should not get mad at your Elementary/Grade school teachers or science teachers from high school. To be fair to them, they didn’t know this either.

For some time, the 7 continent theory held perfect ground. That was until the discovery of an eighth that science is trying to officially recognize as a Continent. Known as Zealandia, most of the continent happens to be submerged in the ocean. However, a tiny part of it managed to survive the ages to become the New Zealand we know today. We feel Zealandia should certainly be recognized as the eighth continent on Earth, despite its underwater status.

There Have Been 5 Mass Extinctions And Somehow We’re Still Here.

Mind-blowing facts about the Earth like this make you truly consider if you’re worthy of such an honor. However, it is completely true that the Earth has suffered a mass extinction 5 times now. While there have been several extinction-level events beyond this, the major 5 are our big focus, of course. The first happened 440 million years ago called the End Ordovician where 85% of species were killed.

The next up is the Late Devonian (365 million years ago, 75% of species lost), End Permian (253 million years ago, 96% marine life; 70% terrestrial life species lost), End Triassic (201 million years ago, 80% of species lost), and the End Cretaceous (66 million years ago, 75% of species lost). As weird as it might be, if not for these extinctions and the world-changing events that came with it, we would not be here today. Consider yourself lucky…

 -by Joe Burgett, Science Sensei  

from 40 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Earth That We All Take For Granted

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