From weight loss at the Equator and the true length of a day to the planet’s largest
organism and what really lies beneath the surface after all, today we look at WEIRD
Things You Didn’t Know About Earth!
12.
You Weigh Less When Standing on the Equator In keeping with Newton’s Laws of Motion,
the outermost bulge of the Earth signified by the Equator was created by its continuation
in a straight line combined with its rotation.
Since both the North and South Poles are closer to the planet’s core than the Equator, an
individual standing on the Equator would experience less of a gravitational pull in relation to
the Earth’s inner mass.
Thus, if you were to travel to Antarctica, weigh yourself and then do the same thing
along any area of the Equator, you would weigh less - approximately 0.5 percent less.
So the next time someone inquires about your weight, ask them if they have time for a quick
trip to Ecuador.
11.
We Are Always on the Move As if people living along the Equator didn’t
have it good enough weighing slightly less than the rest of us, they also benefit from
the fact that they are moving faster through space than anyone else on the planet.
In reverse, anyone sturdy enough to brave the cold and stand at the exact point of either
the North or South Pole wouldn’t be moving at all.
For the majority of us who find themselves situated in neither area, while standing on
our rotating planet, we are moving through space at a speed of up to 1,000 miles per
hour.
According to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, if the Earth were to suddenly cease its rotation,
most of us would be thrown several miles, turning us into the largest collection of
unrestrained crash test dummies in history.
10.
The North and South Poles Flip While Earth’s geographically established
Poles remain the same, its magnetic Poles change every few hundred-thousand years.
This process occurs as a result of the ever-changing molten metals deep beneath the planet’s
surface.
If you had the ability to stand in one place with a compass, and then jump back in time
almost a million years to that exact same place, the compass’s perception of True
North would change completely.
The last time the planet achieved total Pole reversal is estimated to have been just under
8,000,000 years ago.
With each passing year, the Earth’s magnetic North Pole shifts even more by roughly 40
miles.
9.
Earth’s Largest Living Organism is an Invasive Fungus
When people are asked the question, “What’s the largest living thing on Earth?”
many would first jump to the idea of mammals that reside either on land or in the ocean.
Few would respond that it’s a giant mushroom in Oregon, but that happens to be the correct
answer.
While the term, “giant mushroom” might make you think of an illustration from Alice
in Wonderland, the very specific type of mushroom found in Eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountain
Range is actually a thinly-stretched, rapidly moving fungus that currently covers well over
2,000 acres.
Known as the honey mushroom, this organism is both stealth and lethal.
It is poisonous to eat and kills almost every tree with which it comes in contact.
The reason why most of the trees affected by the honey mushroom remain standing and
in apparent good health stems from the fungus’s slow, drawn-out attack on a tree’s inner
tissue.
As a result, it can take up to three decades for a honey mushroom to kill a tree.
8.
The Earth is Not Perfectly Round Despite the images conveyed from space via
astronauts and satellites, Planet Earth is not, in fact, a perfect sphere.
The myth that the Earth was flat and the story that Columbus disproved its flatness were
both disproven long ago.
But ever since the early 18th Century, scientists have known that the Earth is actually what
Isaac Newton referred to as an oblate spheroid.
This means that the distance between the planet’s core and the Equator is actually longer than
the distance between the same core and the North or South Pole.
Today, this shape is often called a squashed sphere.
In addition to its slightly indented top and bottom, the Earth bares a stronger resemblance
to a half-deflated balloon than is does to a fully-inflated basketball.
This is because our spheroid’s surface is constantly changing due to a wide variety
of factors, including shifts in weather, climate and tectonic plates, as well as collisions
with asteroids of varying sizes, over several millennia.
Additionally, the planet’s inner mass has never been evenly proportioned.
In order to keep up with the Earth’s changing shape, scientists now use a technological
approach called satellite laser ranging to determine this big rock’s exact shape and
size.
7.
There Aren’t Actually 24 Hours in a Day Just like how the Earth’s geographic Poles
are different from its magnetic Poles, a day on Earth is actually measured in two distinct
ways.
First, there is a solar day, which is based on the Earth’s relationship to the sun and
measures out to be approximately 24 hours.
Then, there is the planet’s sidereal day, which is based on the speed at which the Earth
turns on its axis.
That lasts 23 hours, 56 minutes and a little over four minutes.
The slight but surprising difference between these two measurements allows for the Earth
to return to its original position in relation to the sun without causing the periods we
know as daytime and nighttime to eventually reverse themselves.
6.
The Earth’s Core is the Same Temperature as the Sun
Even though all surface-level life on our planet - including mankind - remains dependent
on sunlight for its survival, the sun is not the only source of heat and energy the planet
has.
According to a 2013 measurement and analysis performed by French researchers, the Earth’s
core temperature is roughly 6,000 degrees Celsius, which is almost 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Using X-ray technology to simulate the pressure and heat consistent with the core’s established
depth, scientists were able to determine for the first time that this inner temperature
matches that of the sun.
But it remains heavily debatable whether we as humans will ever be able to harness the
core’s energy the way we do with the sun’s energy.
5.
The Earth Recycles Itself Through a continuous process as old as the
planet itself, the Earth’s surface has never consisted of the exact same material over
the course of its 4.54 billion-year history.
As magma cools and solidifies upon emerging from beneath the surface, it hardens and forms
igneous rock.
These rock formations then shift as a result of both tectonic activity and erosion.
The resulting sedimentary rocks are eventually pushed back into the Earth by forces of nature,
where they form into metamorphic rocks and eventually turn back into magma, depending
on their placement.
This perpetual facelift makes it so that the Earth we all know today would be unrecognizable
compared to the Earth of just a million years ago - not only because of the absence of modern
technology, but also because of its completely different geographical make-up.
4.
Much of the Earth Remains Unexplored Despite the fact that the Earth’s oceans
cover 70 percent of the planet, human beings have only explored about 5 percent of those
waters.
Due to our lack of resources in thoroughly charting the deepest reaches of our largest
bodies of water, we remain in the dark regarding the mysteries they preserve.
Scientists agree that we have yet to encounter some of the largest ecosystems the planet
has to offer.
Areas like the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest spot in any ocean, have been determined
to support thriving microbial organisms.
A precise estimate of just how many has yet to be reached.
The rest of the ocean floor holds similar unanswered questions, leading many researchers
to speculate how large or numerous some sea-dwelling aliens may turn out to be.
And in the remaining frozen regions of the world, there are countless preserved bodies
of extinct animals, as well as still-living prehistoric bacteria.
3.
We Are Surrounded By Space Garbage In addition to the Earth’s moon and asteroids
that are pushed in and out of its orbit, our planet is surrounded by both functional and
obsolete satellites as well as the discarded parts of long-completed spacecraft missions.
Since the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, well over 4,000 other satellites
and manned spacecrafts have been sent into orbit.
Some of the residual objects have even escaped our orbit, eventually crashing onto the Moon,
Mars and Venus.
Some have returned to Earth, often burning up in our atmosphere.
While the precise number of man-made objects is impossible to determine, experts at NASA
have concluded that it is far beyond a hundred-million pieces.
Regardless of whether mankind is still around when extraterrestrial visitors finally pay
visit, it is safe to say that plenty of reminders of our dominion over the Earth will be floating
around it long after we’re gone.
2.
There Are Living Clouds While you may sometimes hear the act of daydreaming
referred to as “living in the clouds,” you probably didn’t consider the fact that
the clouds may already be taken.
Clouds don’t just appear out of nowhere; they require liquid or solid surfaces from
which to draw their mass.
These sources are called cloud condensation nuclei, and they can include everything from
dust to smoke to the exhaust emitted by aircrafts.
In particularly warm climates, condensation nuclei can also include bacteria.
Since bacteria can spread easily through warm air, and naturally collects water, it often
finds itself at home within the vapor that forms clouds.
This is why biological nuclei are less likely to found in snow found in Antarctica than
snow from Western Europe.
1.
The Earth Might Have Hidden Oceans In 2016, an excavation in Brazil uncovered
a diamond that had been resting for over 620 miles beneath the Earth’s surface.
That’s roughly a third of the distance between the planet’s surface and its core.
The gem could not have been created through natural occurrences without the presence of
water.
This discovery has added to existing scientific theories that there may be large bodies of
water deep within the Earth’s mantle.
While the extent to which these bodies may support life remains a mystery, experts are
certain that they would not bear any resemblance to the surface-level oceans we as humans have
always known.
And if there is marine life deep down there, it would’ve had to adapt to extremely hot,
molten temperatures as well as the complete absence of light.
The question is what’s more unsettling - the potential for a visit from unknown extraterrestrials
from space… or the potential existence of alien life deep down below our feet?