Our planet
Planet Earth is a pretty awesome place, check out these amazing facts about the place that we all call home…
Wow, that’s old!
Scientists have calculated the Earth to be around 4.5 billion years old! The Earth is so old that if it’s history was squeezed into just one day, humans wouldn’t appear until the very last few seconds before midnight!
Our solar system
The Earth is one of 8 amazing planets that travel around the Sun. The planets are called Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Together with the Sun, these planets, and a number of smaller planets make up our solar system*.
Our Earth
The Earth is the third planet from the sun and the fifth largest. Its diameter* measures nearly 8,000 miles and its circumference*, the distance around the equator, is 24,901 miles. The Earth is really big;
You could line up about 800,000 Olympic sized swimming pools around the Earth’s equator!
The Sun
The Sun is a star – a gigantic ball of incredibly hot gases which shoot light and heat in all directions! Without heat and light from the Sun, life on Earth would be impossible.
The Sun is roughly spherical in shape and is huge! Around 1,300,000 times bigger than Earth. You could fit around 1.3 million Earths inside it!
Circling the Sun
Even though we can’t feel it, the Earth is always moving!
Our planet moves at 67,000 miles per hour as it circles the Sun*. Every year, the Earth travels over 580 million miles to complete a full trip around the Sun or an ‘orbit’*.
Light speed
The Sun is more than 90 million miles from the Earth, but it takes just 8 minutes for sunlight to reach us.
Light is the fastest thing in the universe that we know of! It races through space at an incredible speed of 186,000 miles every second. If you travelled at the speed of light, you could run around the Earth early 8 times in just 1 second!
Rotating Earth
The Earth leans over or is ‘tilted’ on its axis* as it travels around or ‘orbits’ the Sun.
Because of this tilt, different parts of Earth face the Sun directly at different times of the year. We call these changes spring, summer, autumn and winter – the seasons!
As well as tilting, the Earth spins at an incredible 1,000 miles per hour. Even though the Earth is spinning so fast, we don’t feel it!
Night and day
It takes 24 hours for the Earth to complete one full spin or ‘rotation’ on its axis, we call this a day.
It's daytime on the side of the Earth that faces the Sun and night time on the side that faces away. So when it is night in the UK, it is morning in Australia!
The atmosphere
Wrapped around the Earth is a layer of gases called the atmosphere*. It which stretches around 300 miles above the Earth’s surface. These gases give us air to breathe, and also trap the Sun’s heat to keep us nice and warm!
The atmosphere also protects us by blocking some of the Sun’s harmful rays – it’s like Earth’s natural sun cream!
Gravity
Gravity* is an invisible force which attracts objects towards each other. Gravity is very important to our everyday lives, without it your feet wouldn’t stay on the ground, and you’d float off into space!
People, animals, plants, water and even air stay on Earth because of gravity. But gravity is not just found on Earth, the Sun has its own gravity which actually keeps the Earth in orbit!*
The Moon
The Moon* is a rock that orbits or circles the Earth. It takes about twenty eight days to complete one orbit of the Earth. Planet Earth has one natural moon, which is held in orbit by gravity*. The moon’s gravity is much weaker than the Earth’s! In fact, you could jump about 6 times higher on the Moon compared to on Earth.
Meteors
A meteor is what we see when a space rock falls to Earth. It is often a bright light flying through the night sky. We often call meteors ‘shooting stars’!
The Earth’s atmosphere also protects us from meteors* by heating them up so much that they eventually burn up before they reach the ground – keeping us safe!
Blue planet
Have you ever wondered why our planet is called the ‘Blue Planet’? This is because the Earth looks blue from space because over 70% of its surface is seas, rivers, lakes and oceans.
Earth isn’t mostly land, its actually mostly water!
Tides
When sea level falls and rises throughout the day, we call this the ‘tide’. There are usually two low tides and two high tides each day. The size of the tides change throughout the month.
You might be wondering what causes tides, and you might not think it has anything to do with the moon – but it does! The Moon’s gravity is the main force that pulls the Earth’s oceans between low and high tides.
“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”
- Sir David Attenborough -
