10 incredible facts about the earth

Day by day we live our lives, marked by the rotation of our planet giving us our beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

But have you ever wondered about the planet we live on, the Earth?

Have you ever wondered what it’s made of? Or how much it weighs?

Maybe you’ve wondered why have a leap year? Or maybe you’ve never really given it a passing thought.

For all of you wanderers, or all of you who just want to know something new, here’s 30 interesting facts about our brilliant planet. 3. A year on Earth is not 365 days as widely thought, but rather 365.2564 days. The extra 0.2564 days is where the extra day that is added onto February every leap year, or every four years, comes from.

4. The Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down. However it is slowing down so very minimally (approximately 17 milliseconds per hundred years) that it will be about 140 million years before the Earth experiences 25 hour days.

5. The Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after either a Greek or Roman God.

1. The planet Earth weighs approximately 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms, thats nearly 6 septillion kg. Thats roughly the same amount of weight as 54,807,449,541,284,403 around 55 quintillion Blue Whales-the heaviest creature on the planet

2. Contrary to popular belief it does not take the Earth 24 hours to complete a single rotation, it actually takes it 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds to complete a rotation and astronomers call this a sidereal day. 6. The name Earth comes from a combination of Old English and Germanic and is derived from ‘eor(th)e’ and ‘ertha’ which mean ‘ground’.

7. Earth is the only planet in our solar system to have water in all three of its forms (Liquid, Solis & Gas).

8. The Earth is struck by lightning 100 times per second – that’s 8.6 million times per day!

9.The Queen of the U.K. is the legal owner of one sixth of the Earth’s land surface!

10. The Earth is actually not round in shape – it is geoid. This is because the rounded shape has a slight bulge towards the equator which is caused by the Earth’s rotation.