10 Interesting facts about Earth

Plate tectonics keep the planet comfortable

Earth is the only planet in the Solar System with plate tectonics. The outer crust of the Earth is broken up into regions known as tectonic plates. These are floating on top of the magma interior of the Earth and can move against one another. When two plates collide, one plate can go underneath another.

This process is very important. When microscopic plants in the ocean die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean. Over long periods of time, the remnants of this life, rich in carbon, are carried back into the interior of the Earth and recycled. This pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, which makes sure we don’t get a runaway greenhouse effect, like what happened on Venus.

Without the plate tectonics, there’d be no way to recycle this carbon, and the Earth would overheat.

Earth is almost a sphere

The Earth’s shape could be described as an oblate spheroid. It’s kind of like a sphere, but the Earth’s rotation causes the equator to bulge out . What this means is that the measurement from pole to pole is about 43 km less than the diameter of Earth across the equator.

Even though the tallest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest, the feature that’s furthest from the center of the Earth is actually Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.

Earth is mostly iron, oxygen and silicon

If you could separate the Earth out into piles of material, you’d get 32.1 % iron, 30.1% oxygen, 15.1% silicon, and 13.9% magnesium. Of course, most of this iron is actually down at the core of the Earth. If you could actually get down and sample the core, it would be 88% iron. 47% of the Earth’s crust consists of oxygen.

70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water

When astronauts first went into the space, they looked back at the Earth with human eyes for 

the first time, and called our home the Blue Planet. And it’s no surprise. 70% of our planet is covered with oceans. The remaining 30% is the solid ground, rising above sea level.

The Earth’s atmosphere extends out to 10,000 km

The atmosphere is thickest within the first 50 km or so, but it actually reaches out to about 10,000 km above the surface of the planet. This outermost layer of the atmosphere is called the exosphere, and starts about 500 km above the surface of the Earth. As we said, it goes all the way up to 10,000 km above the surface. At this point, free-moving particles can actually escape the pull of Earth’s gravity, and be blown away by the Sun’s solar wind.

But this high atmosphere is extremely thin. The bulk of the Earth’s atmosphere is down near the Earth itself. In fact, 75% of the Earth’s atmosphere is contained within the first 11 km above the planet’s surface.

Want more planet Earth facts? We’re halfway through. Here come 5 more.

The Earth’s molten iron core creates a magnetic field

The Earth is like a great big magnet, with poles at the top and bottom of the planet, near to the 

actual geographic poles. This magnetic field extends from the surface of the Earth out thousands of kilometers – a region called the magnetosphere.

Be grateful for the magnetosphere. Without it particles from the Sun’s solar wind would hit the Earth directly, exposing the surface of the planet to significant amounts of radiation. Instead, the magnetosphere channels the solar wind around the Earth, protecting us from harm.

Scientists think that the magnetic field is generated by the molten outer core of the Earth, where heat creates convection motions of conducting materials. This generates electric currents that create the magnetic field.

Earth doesn’t take 24 hours to rotate on its axis

It’s actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. This is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to completely rotate around its axis; astronomers call this a sidereal day. Now wait a second, that means a day is 4 minutes shorter than we think it is. You’d think that time would add up, day by day, and within a few months, day would be night, and night would be day.

Remember that the Earth orbits around the Sun. Every day, the Sun moves compared to the background stars by about 1° – about the size of the Moon in the sky. And so, if you add up that little motion from the Sun that we see because the Earth is orbiting around it, as well as the rotation on its axis, you get a total of 24 hours. Now that sounds like the day we know.

A year on Earth isn’t 365 days

It’s actually 365.2564 days. It’s this extra .2564 days that creates the need for leap years. That’s why we tack on an extra day in February every year divisible by 4 – 2004, 2008, etc – unless it’s divisible by 100 (1900, 2100, etc)… unless it’s divisible by 400 (1600, 2000, etc).

Earth has 1 moon and 2 co-orbital satellites

As you’re probably aware, Earth has 1 moon (The Moon). But did you know there are 2 additional asteroids locked into a co-orbital orbits with Earth? They’re called 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA₂₉. We won’t go into too much detail about the Moon, I’m sure you’ve heard all about it.

3753 Cruithne is 5 km across, and sometimes called Earth’s second moon. It doesn’t actually orbit the Earth, but has a synchronized orbit with our home planet. It has an orbit that makes it look like it’s following the Earth in orbit, but it’s actually following its own, distinct path around the Sun.

2002 AA₂₉ is only 60 meters across, and makes a horseshoe orbit around the Earth that brings it close to the planet every 95 years. In about 600 years, it will appear to circle Earth in a quasi-satellite orbit. Scientists have suggested that it might make a good target for a space exploration mission.

Earth is the only planet known to have life

We’ve discovered past evidence of water on Mars, and the building blocks of life on Saturn’s moon Titan. We can see amino acids in nebulae in deep space. But Earth is the only place life has actually been discovered.

But if there’s life on other planets, scientists are building the experiments that will help find it. A new rover called the Mars Science Laboratory will be heading to Mars in the next few years, equipped with experiments that can detect life in the soil on the Red Planet. Giant radio dishes scan distant stars, listening for the characteristic signals of intelligent life reaching out across interstellar space. And new space telescopes, such as the European Space Agency’s Darwin mission might be powerful enough to sense the presence of life on other worlds.

5 Lessons We Can Learn From Children

Lack of Fear

Children possess brilliance in their simplicity. They may not know much about the world, but in some ways this is their biggest strength. Growing up greatly expands our views of the world, but there are some basic and healthy values that we can forget with age. Here are a few of them…

We are born fear only two things: falling and loud noises. All other fears are instilled in us by the people we grow up around. Some of these fears are legitimate and necessary for living in a modernized world, like being hit by a car. Others are completely unnecessary and serve only to hinder us from being everything we can be. Consider for a moment which of your fears actually protect you from harm and which are illogical.

No Social Boundaries

Until a child is told to “never talk to strangers!” they have no qualms about talking to random people. The “don’t talk to strangers” lesson seems to stick way past childhood which is a travesty! Strangers are wonderful and interesting people. Plus what is a friend before he/she is a friend but a stranger? I’ve written before about the oxymoron of social interaction but I even need a reminder sometimes. In short, why do we insist on making elevator rides supremely awkward? Who knows who you might meet or what you might learn by striking a small conversation with a stranger. Remember, we’re all human :)

Endless Curiosity & Wonder

When you’re a kid, any activity can be fun for hours and hours. Legos, playing ‘house,’ hide-and-go-seek and of course action figures were all sources of endless enjoyment. So what happened? As adults we can barely watch the same TV show for 30 minutes without looking for something better. During the last few days I’ve been attempting to re-live the wonder of childhood by viewing the world from a different perspective. I’ve found that if you really put forth the effort to find the beauty in small things (nature, architecture, art, the wonder of technology) it can be done! Take a second and look at something, really look at it! A basic example would the bark of a tree. If you can see the intricacy and beauty of the spirals of wood, you can apply that same perspective to bigger and even more fantastic things.

Unconditional Love

Children have no biases when it comes to love. If you smile at a child, he/she will beam a huge smile back at you for no reason other than your presence. Children do not love with expectation of something better in return, they just love. This is difficult to employ as adults but has some amazing benefits as I learned in my experiment with love. You can even love people that you would normally despise and it feels orgasmic in comparison. What’s more fun to do, smiling or frowning, punching or hugging? I think you get the idea.

It’s Okay to Play

It’s okay to be childish! Reaching a certain age does not mean we need to act that age all the time. Maturity is sometimes extremely overrated. Life shouldn’t be taken that seriously because do keep in mind, this is all transient and will all go up in smoke at some point. You might as well act like a kid sometimes and have fun living in the moment.

What other lessons can we learn from the very young?

NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Intro to NLP

According to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), 10% of the mind is conscious, leaving 90% of the mind to the unconscious. Now what does this mean?

The conscious mind is simply what we are focused on at any given moment. On the other hand, the unconscious is the massive store of every experience, belief, habit, method and thought we have ever had. Think of the conscious being the area of a dark hole that is illuminated by a torch (our mind). The rest of the hole, where the light cannot reach, is the unconscious. Or minds can only focus on that 10% at a time, which leaves the 90% to be sorted through with our unconscious mind.

NLP states that there are programs in our unconscious that dictate how we think and act. They are the summation of all of our experiences. NLP is focused on being able to read, control and change these programs so that we can better understand and manipulate ourselves and others.

A Brief History

During the 1970′s, Richard Bandler and John Grinder studied therapy sessions transcripts from Fritz Perls, Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir — three of the most renowned psychologists of the time. They believe that all masters of human communication had similar patterns and methods that could be learned by others through observation. Their goal was to codify the “know-how” of these psychologists to find out what set their methods apart from others with lesser success. As they expected, Bandler and Gringer began to see patterns in the tone and diction of the psychologists and what subsequent reactions they received from their patients.

After years of studying these transcripts and modeling them in sessions with their own patients, Bandler and Grinder came up with 3 rules for successful communication in therapy, business and sales:

1. To know what outcome you want, to be flexible in your behaviour
2. To generate different kinds of behaviour to find out what response you get
3. To have enough sensory experience to notice when you get the responses that you want

Key Principles of NLP

Matching – In order to build rapport with other people, one should match or “pace” the verbal and non-verbal language of others. By matching the posture, breathing pattern, gestures, voice tone, diction, etc. of some you are talking to, you will make them more comfortable with you which will make them like you more.

Related idea: Many NLP practitioners say that you will appear to be much more convincing if you speak only when your subject is exhaling. Even if you have to stop talking mid-sentence, you should aim to speak only when they breath out. Exhalation is a state of relaxation so the mind is more at ease, making your statements more powerful.

Anchoring – The process of associating a past state or response with a particular stimulus. The stimulus, or “anchor,” could be anything from a touch to specific smell. NLP claims that re-calling past states and anchoring them to the a stimulus can make them useful once again in the present. This idea is similar to when you hear a song that immediately brings you back to a moment when it was playing. You can feel the emotions, the vibe, and maybe even the weather conditions of that moment just from hearing the song. The same rules apply for anchoring.

For example, in Niel Strauss’s “The Game,” a book describing the world of pick-up artists (PUA’s), the author describes the anchoring technique of one PUA specializing in NLP. The man would ask women to describe the feeling of having butterflies in their stomach when they see a man they are attracted to. While the women would continue to describe (and thus FEEL this emotion), the PUA would touch their arm or hand repeatedly to anchor that emotion to his touch. When the imagination game was over, the woman in question would be hopelessly attracted to the PUA. Hopefully now you are beginning to see why NLP is so fascinating…

The Milton Model – Based on the hypnotic techniques of Milton Erickson, the founder of clinical hypnotherapy, the Milton Model aims to overload the conscious mind so as to reach the unconscious mind. A series of skillfully vague questions are asked that leave gaps for the subject to fill in with their unconscious mind.

Emoto’s Water Experiment: The Power of Thoughts

Through the 1990′s, Dr. Masaru Emoto performed a series of experiments observing the physical effect of words, prayers, music and environment on the crystalline structure of water. Emoto hired photographers to take pictures of water after being exposed to the different variables and subsequently frozen so that they would form crystalline structures. The results were nothing short of remarkable..

For example:

Water Before Prayer                     Water After Prayer

 

Biwako Lake (polluted)                 Shimanto River (clean)

 

After observing these miraculous results, Dr. Emoto went on to type out different words, both positive and negative in nature, and taped them to containers full of water. The results were as follows:

“You make me sick, I will kill you”           “Adolph Hitler”

 

“Thank you”                                                   “Love and Appreciation”

 

As you can tell, the water stamped with positive words is far more symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing than that stamped with dark, negative phrases. If you are reading this article on this particular website, you probably already knew that positive and negative thinking have a major impact on the surrounding environment. That concept is relatively easy to grasp, but this extremely tangible evidence of it is astounding. If the words and thoughts that come out of us have this effect on water crystals, it’s amazing to think of what kind of effect they have on the people and events that come into our lives.

Oh and by the way, the average human body is 60% water. Ponder that one a while…

Some may say that this could be the work of biased photographers or biased photo selection by Emoto himself. However, Emoto dispelled this accusation in an interview during which he stated:

“This is one of the more difficult areas to clarify. However, from continuing these experiments we have come to the conclusion that the water is reacting to the actual words. For example, for our trip to Europe we tried using the words “thank you” and “you fool” in German. The people on our team who took the actual photographs of the water crystals did not understand the German for “you fool”, and yet we were able to obtain exactly the same kind of results in the different crystal formations based on the words used.”

Once a certain vibration is introduced to the water, how long does the water “remember” that crystalline structure?

“This will be different depending on the original structure of the water itself. Tap water will lose its memory quickly. We refer to the crystalline structure of water as “clusters.” The smaller the clusters, the longer the water will retain its memory. If there is too much space between the clusters, other information could easily infiltrate this space, making it hard for the clusters to hold the integrity of the information. Other micro-organisms could also enter this space. A tight bonding structure is best for maintaining the integrity of information.”

What kind of words would create smaller clusters and what kind of words would create larger clusters?

“Slang words like “you fool” destroy clusters. You would not see any crystals in these cases. Negative phrases and words create large clusters or will not form clusters, and positive, beautiful words and phrases create small, tight clusters.”

For more information on Emoto’s experiments with water, please visit his website