Earth

Earth is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. As the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, Earth can cast shadows and can be, on rare occasion, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.Earth lies within Earth's orbit, and so never appears to venture far from the Sun, either setting in the west just after dusk or rising in the east a bit before dawn. Earth orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days. With a rotation period of 243 Earth days, it takes longer to rotate about its axis than any other planet in the Solar System by far, and does so in the opposite direction to all but Uranus (meaning the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east).Earth does not have any moons, a distinction it shares only with Mercury among the planets in the Solar System

Earth is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times the sea level pressure of Earth, or roughly the pressure at 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Earth has, by far, the hottest surface of any planet in the Solar System, with a mean temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Earth is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past, but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. Earth' surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism

The possibility of life on Earth has long been a topic of speculation, and in recent years has received active research. Following a 2019 observation that the light absorbance of the upper cloud layers was consistent with the presence of microorganisms, a September 2020 article in Nature Astronomy announced the detection of phosphine gas, a biomarker, in concentrations higher than can be explained by any known abiotic source.However, doubts have been cast on these observations due to the failure to detect phosphine at other wavelengths and data-processing issues.

Earth Facts

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