What is the most amazing/awesome fact about the Earth?

watercompany wrote:

No, when referring to our planet as a proper noun there should be no "the".

Earth is the third planet from the sun.

We are standing on the earth.

We live on the planet Earth.

Point taken. Thanks.

One Who Knows Better wrote:

hfkhsdkjfhs wrote:

With the exception of a few things we've launched into outer space, everything that was ever on the Earth is still somewhere on the Earth.

Every animal/plant/bacteria/person/etc that ever lived is still here somewhere (perhaps broken down into its constituent atoms).

Every object you ever owned is somewhere out there, just difficult to find. Every object ever created is somewhere, if you knew where to look...

This ^ is false. Atoms and small molecules escape the earth all the time. In addition, large objects, even significant portions of the planet, have been ejected in large scale collisions in the past.

OK, technically not true due to small molecules/subatomic particles, etc, and any large scale mass ejections (rare).

But my point stands...anything that existed is still here somewhere. If there is a holy grail it is here somewhere. Every creature that ever existed, even if we will never discover it, is in the ground somewhere (though probably decomposed).

Another similar fact that trips me out from time to time is that every word that we use had to have been invented by someone...even the word "the". At one point in time, nobody knew what the word "the" meant.

Also, if evolution is correct, there was a time before bacteria where "dead" things did not decompose (though I suppose they could have been broken down by random chemical or thermal processes).

Home to 8.7 million different species (not counting the millions that have already past, and the millions to come).

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." - Douglas Adams

It is round and we don't fall off,

Menace wrote:

The most amazing fact about Earth is it is always prone to war. 3 things are certain in life. Death,Taxes,War

..And the list of things certain in life expands yet again.

First off, I mean no disrespect to the earth. It is an amazing place.

However, some of these comments are amusing like "we are so lucky that the earth has the perfect combination of conditions for life", "Water can exist as a liquid", "Gravity is just the right force so we don't float away and don't get crushed", "our atmosphere is perfectly suited to us", "the temperature is just right"...

Really? You make it sound like we were looking for a place to live and luckily found the earth. In fact, the earth was here with it's current conditions, and creatures that benefited from those conditions thrived and those that did not, died. It shouldn't be surprising that Earth is perfectly suited to us.

After all, isn't it amazing that the range of light detected by our eyes is perfectly centered on the light wavelengths emitted from our sun? What are the chances?

The problem is that life as we know it is so super specialized to Earth conditions that if global warming or some other cause makes Earth conditions change, it corrects populations dramatically.

I wonder how many twins Earth has out there. How many planets have almost exactly earth's combination of conditions? The odds are very good that they exist, but there are many many factors that need to be right on to sustain our way of life...

The unshakeable faith in facts.

that after 4 Billion years of evolution ....

nicki minaj......

demographer wrote:

More people live in China, India, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria than in the rest of the world put together.

Well duh, that is a pretty large percentage of the Earth's land.

Earth is undefeated in "Miss Universe" contests.

WLAOE wrote:

Earth is undefeated in "Miss Universe" contests.

Whoah, what's up with that? Looks like racism to me.

Well, the Russians probably would win Oly Gold in pairs figure skating every 4 years if you only had Russian judges. I suspect Earthlings would have more trouble winning "Miss Universe" titles if some or all of the judges were aliens.

That human life (or any life really) was able to develop.

Earth is around 4.5 Billion years old. But this is not the amazing fact.

The amazing fact that is in our day and age, with more tools and knowledge to know more than anyone or anything has in history (to our knowledge at least) a rather perplexing number of our race believes the entire universe is only 6,000 or so years old.

Case and point from a recent conversation: "I can see the universe being thousands of years old, but not millions". Me in my head: "well, your even wrong about what your wrong about, it's actually Billions of years old. 13.7 give or take a few million". Only about 2,000,000 times difference.

that all the people on earth could fit into a giant suburb the size of Texas. complete with a there own house and decent sized yard.

it supports life that is conscious/aware of its existence

Age of deliberate ignorance wrote:

Earth is around 4.5 Billion years old. But this is not the amazing fact.

The amazing fact that is in our day and age, with more tools and knowledge to know more than anyone or anything has in history (to our knowledge at least) a rather perplexing number of our race believes the entire universe is only 6,000 or so years old.

Case and point (Case in point) from a recent conversation: "I can see the universe being thousands of years old, but not millions". Me in my head: "well, your (you're) even wrong about what your (you're) wrong about, it's actually Billions of years old. 13.7 give or take a few million". Only about 2,000,000 times difference.

That so many people have such trouble with the English language.

kell Fungee wrote:

that all the people on earth could fit into a giant suburb the size of Texas. complete with a there (their) own house and decent sized yard.

Yet another case in point.