From a surprising amount of north poles to exploring the depths of the ocean.
I’m Bob from W5L, join me as I take you through 8 incredible facts about the earth!
8.
EARTH’S LOWEST KNOWN POINT IS 7 MILES BELOW SEA LEVEL
At a depth of roughly 36,000 feet, the Challenger Deep is Earth’s lowest known point.
It’s located in the Pacific Ocean, at the southern end of the Marianas Trench.
The Challenger Deep can be best described as a narrow, slot-shaped depression at the
bottom of an unusually deep trench.
The first recordings of its depth were made by the crew of the British Royal Navy survey
ship HMS Challenger as it circumnavigated the globe between 1872 and 1876 to study the
ocean’s depths.
Not coincidentally, this is how the Challenger Deep got its name.
Only two successful manned descents have been made.
On January 23, 1960, Jacque Piccard and Don Walsh made history by being the first humans
to travel into the Challenger Deep.
In 2012, movie director James Cameron made the first-ever solo descent in the deep-submergence
vehicle Deepsea Challenger, which was custom-built to withstand the 16,000 pounds of pressure
at the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
He reported seeing few signs of life and described the environment as isolated, lunar, and desolate.
All things considered, the Challenger Deep seems pretty uneventful.
However, the ability to travel nearly seven miles beneath the ocean’s surface is pretty
fascinating in its own right.
Would you travel into the Challenger Deep if you were given the chance?
7.
THERE ARE FOUR NORTH POLES
You probably learned in science class that there are one or two North Poles.
Actually, there’s four.
First, there’s the Geographic North Pole - an affixed geographic point on our planet’s
axis of rotation, diametrically opposed to the Geographic South Pole.
All of the planet’s time zones and meridians intersect at this point, which is why there’s
no definite time there.
The Geographic North Pole is necessary for precise navigation.
Next, there’s the North Dip Pole, also known as the North Magnetic Pole.
It’s the location where the planet’s geomagnetic field is perpendicular to its surface - in
other words, where the Earth’s magnetic force points vertically downward.
Due to frequent magnetic changes in the Earth’s core, the North Dip Pole is not in a fixed
location.
In the past century, it has migrated northward from 71 degrees latitude to its current location
at 85 degrees north.
There’s also a South Dip Pole, but unlike the Geographic poles, it’s not antipodal
to the North Dip Pole - the two are currently off by over 20 degrees latitude.
When a compass points north, it’s pointing toward the North Dip Pole.
If you position yourself at the North Dip Pole and hold your compass in a horizontal
position, the needle will point downward, spin, or point toward any magnetic clothing
you’re wearing.
To further complicate things, there’s what’s known as the geomagnetic North Pole - the
northern end of the magnetic sphere surrounding Earth.
Like the North Dip Pole, the geomagnetic North Pole is not in a fixed location - throughout
the past century, it has migrated from Greenland to Canada.
The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, occurs in an oval ring centered around
the geomagnetic North Pole.
There’s also the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility - the point in the Arctic Ocean farthest from
any coastline.
Located a few hundred miles from the Geographic North Pole, it lies on the shifting pack ice
of the northern Arctic Ocean.
Nobody has ever reached the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility, though several unsuccessful
attempts have been made.
And now for a surprising one, but first if you are a returning subscriber welcome back!
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Do you know how often a new species is discovered in the Amazon??
Write your answer in the comments below!
The answer is coming up!!!
6.
THE EARTH WOBBLES ON ITS AXIS
Contrary to popular belief, the Earth doesn’t spin smoothly; rather, it wobbles irregularly
over time.
For many years, researchers were stumped by the wavering tendencies of the Earth’s axis.
In 2016, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory figured out that the planet’s
wobbling is partially caused by draughts and periods of heavy rain in various places.
Dry and wet seasons are responsible for between 25 and 30 percent of the push-and-pull of
the Earth’s axis.
Scientists also recently discovered that the Earth’s mass is redistributed by the melting
and forming of ice sheets, which also causes the polar axis to shift.
In fact, most of the force pulling and pushing on the polar axis is caused by the Greenland
and Antarctic ice sheets.
Similarly to ice sheets, the movement of water around the world also redistributes the Earth’s
mass and contributes to its wobbling tendencies.
5.
SOME GREENHOUSE EFFECT IS NECESSARY
With climate change at the forefront of many contemporary political agendas, it’s no
surprise that we’ve been programmed to believe that the greenhouse effect is entirely bad
and unnecessary.
However, in the complete absence of a greenhouse effect, the global temperature would plummet
to zero degrees Fahrenheit, or negative 18 degrees Celsius, making the Earth uninhabitable
to most, if not all forms of life.
To give you an idea of how a small change can have a major impact, the global temperature
during the planet’s most recent ice age was only 5 degrees cooler than the current
average.
As terrifying as it is to entertain the idea of a global temperature of negative 18 degrees
Celsius, it’s a problem we don’t have to worry about.
Unfortunately, thanks largely to the burning of fossil fuels, our planet currently faces
the opposite dilemma.
In fact, the warmest years of the past century have occurred within the past decade, and
the global temperature is currently at its highest in a thousand years.
4.
HUMANS HAVE ONLY EXPLORED ABOUT 5% OF THE EARTH’S OCEANS
Seventy percent of the Earth is covered in water.
Initially, it makes sense that such a vast expanse remains largely unexplored - until
the extent of space exploration is taken into account.
It turns out that space is just one of two final frontiers, the other of which is located
on this very planet - as it currently stands, oceanic research is woefully behind the study
of space.
If planets as far as 140 million miles away have been mapped in high definition, what’s
holding us back from learning more about what’s beneath the ocean surface?
After all, our daily lives are more heavily impacted by Earth’s oceans than they are
by faraway parts of the solar system.
Space research has superseded oceanic exploration for a variety of reasons, including funding,
press coverage, and private sector innovation.
In recent years, scientists have called for a thorough, NASA quality mapping of the ocean
floor.
For $3 billion - the cost of a single Mars mission - the entire ocean floor could be
mapped.
There’s a lot to be gained from taking a closer look at the contents of Earth’s vast
oceans.
The deployment of sonar technology to locate the missing Malaysian Airlines airplane in
2014 resulted in the discovery of previously unknown underwater volcanoes, ridges, and
trenches.
However, the future of oceanic discovery remains paradoxically up in the air, as it continues
to lag behind other areas of scientific research.
3.
THE EARTH’S CRUST CONTAINS ENOUGH GOLD TO COVER THE PLANET
Humans have placed an exorbitant value on gold for thousands of years.
Over the past several centuries, the demand for gold has kept up with its consistently
high value.
Not surprisingly, there’s a very realistic possibility that we’ll run out of minable
gold sometime in the foreseeable future.
The gold mining industry has been declining for the past twenty years because less gold
is being discovered and existing mine reserves are shrinking.
The Earth’s gold supply is at no shortage, however: in fact, ninety-nine percent of the
planet’s gold remains untouched by human hands.
Within the Earth’s core, there’s an abundance of gold large enough to cover the world in
a 13 inch thick layer of it.
During the formation of the Earth, meteorite gold and mineral showers led to enormous deposits
of the precious metal.
Due to its weight, the gold then sunk to the planet’s core.
Estimated at 1.6 quadrillion tons, this profusion of gold sits 1,800 miles below the Earth’s
surface and at several thousand degree temperatures.
Unfortunately for those who make their living in the gold mining industry, there’s no
way to mine gold from the Earth’s core.
2.
EARTH’S MAGNETIC POLES WILL EVENTUALLY SWITCH
Earth’s North Magnetic Pole will eventually swap places with its South Magnetic Pole.
The most recent pole reversal occurred 780,000 years ago - long before the existence of humans.
But we’re here now, and our lives depend in many ways on the Earth’s magnetic fields.
The reversal of the poles is a natural part of how the Earth works and has occurred hundreds
of times before, but the world as we know it has yet to experience the phenomenon, which
normally occurs every 200,000 to 300,000 years, and is therefore overdue.
The North Magnetic Pole is migrating at an unusually high speed, and part of the Southern
Hemisphere’s magnetic field has already reversed.
Some scientists believe these are signs of an impending polar reversal.
What would a geomagnetic reversal mean for Earth’s inhabitants?
Several conflicting theories exist.
Some hold that the polar flip may cause exposure to harmful ultraviolet rays, and that animals
that rely on the magnetic field for navigation may become disoriented.
Others believe that because the shift would occur gradually over thousands of years, we’d
have time to prepare and to adjust to the change.
1.
99 % OF EARTH’S SPECIES ARE EXTINCT
Every year, somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 previously unknown living and extinct animal
species are discovered by scientists and archaeologists.
In answer to my question: On average, a new living species is discovered every other day
in the Amazon - not surprising for a rainforest that stretches over four million square miles
and houses ten percent of the world’s known plant and animal species.
Discoveries of new dolphin and monkey species have occurred as recently as 2015.
Despite the frequent discovery of new living species, scientists estimate that 99 percent
of the species that ever existed on Earth are extinct.
How do they know this?
After factoring in the rate at which extinct species are discovered and the amount of fossilized
species that remain undiscovered, they’ve reasonably concluded that the amount of Earth’s
living species represents only a miniscule fraction of how many once existed.
Additionally, the rate at which the rainforest is being destroyed for farming has scientists
concerned that species are going extinct before they have a chance to be studied.
Thanks for watching!
If you have any cool facts about the Earth go ahead and share them with us in the comments
below!!
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