On World Earth Day, frequently asked questions about...

2024-04-22 2024-04-22T10:56:24Z

Weather of Arabia - The Google search engine celebrated World Earth Day, which falls on April 22 of each year , as part of reminding the world of the events of that period. In 1970, about 20 million people in the United States of America took to the streets of major cities, protesting against the impacts. Negative environmental impacts resulting from human activity on the planet.

World Earth Day aims to shed light on the global efforts made to protect the environment and preserve the planet from climate changes that result from industrial progress and human activities. In this article, on the occasion of World Earth Day, learn about the most common questions spread about our planet, Planet Earth.

What do you know about Earth?

Answer: Scientific facts about Earth indicate that more than 70% of the planet's surface is covered by water, with many bodies of water such as seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, swamps, and rivers representing three-quarters of its surface.

Space begins about 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface, where the boundary between space and the Earth's atmosphere is known as the "Kerman Line," which is about 100 kilometers above sea level.

Earth is the only planet known to have life, with approximately 1.2 million cataloged animal species living on it, although this number represents a small fraction of the total actual living organisms on the planet, according to a report from the BBC.

Is the Earth spherical or flat?

Answer: Since ancient times, humanity began to be interested in the shape of the Earth and its transcendence of the surface level more than 2,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks conducted research to measure the shadows during the summer solstice and calculate the circumference of the Earth. In addition, they used the positions of the stars and constellations to estimate distances, and they came to the discovery that the Earth is spherical. .

In the modern era, scientists rely on geodesy, a science that measures the shape of the Earth, gravity, and rotation, to provide accurate measurements that prove that the Earth is spherical. They also make use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and satellites to measure the size and shape of the Earth with accuracy down to a centimeter.

Although the Earth is round, it is not a perfect sphere, as planetary rotation leads to a flattened polarity due to centripetal force.

The Earth's sphericity has also been clearly proven in satellite images, as it appears completely round. There is also other evidence proving this fact, such as the difference in the length of shadows on the Earth's surface and the difference in sunset time according to geographical location, and other natural phenomena such as daily tides and the formation of mountains and valleys. This evidence clearly shows that the Earth is spherical and not flat, with its shape and characteristics affected by different geological and geographical conditions.

How did the land get its name?

Answer: The Earth, or as some know it as the world or the terrestrial body, has an origin story that extends throughout its long history. All of these names carry deep meanings that express a rich heritage of cultures and languages.

It is difficult to pinpoint the original name of the land in history, but linguistics offers some clues and explanations. "Ertha" is thought to be a rough spelling of "earth" in Anglo-Saxon, one of the many ancestral languages of English. This name reflects the deep connection between humans and the land, as the term expresses it in the sense of “the land on which we walk” or “the land on which we grow our crops.”

In addition to "terrestrial," many modern terms for "Earth" come from Latin, such as "Terra," which means land or the ground on which we stand, going back to the roots of words like "terrestrial," "subterranean," and "extraterrestrial." .

Regarding Roman terminology, Orbis was used to refer to the Earth as a sphere, and this shows awareness of the Earth being spherical. Additionally, Mundus was used to describe the entire universe, illustrating the separation between Earth and the rest of the universe.

These ancient terms are reflected in modern languages, highlighting the deep connections between history, language and culture, and enhancing our understanding of how we have developed our understandings of our planet Earth over the centuries.