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Monday, November 12, 2012

EARTH: useful facts, figures, and information


PLANET EARTH:

Word origin: eorthe (from Old English) meaning "ground, soil, dry land"

Other terms: Globe, World

Situated in: Milky Way galaxy

Position: 3rd planet from the Sun

Size: 5th largest planet in the Solar system

Shape: Oblate Spheroid

Age: 4.54 billion years (according to geologists and geophysicists)

Population: 6.8 billion (as of 2009)

Rotation: 86,400 seconds or 24 hours (relative to the Sun, mean solar day) (15 degrees/hr)

Orbit: 150 million km every 365.2564 mean solar days

Average orbital speed:     29.783 km/s (107,218 km/h)

Eccentricity: 0.016710219

Mean radius: 6371 km (3959 mi)

Mean diameter: 12,742 km (7919 mi)

Mean Circumference: 40041 km (24886 mi)

Surface area: 510,072,000 sq. km

148,940,000 km² land  (29.2 %)
361,132,000 km² water (70.8 %)

Volume: 1.0832073 e12 cu. km

Mass: 5.9736 e24 kg

Mean density: 5.5153 g/cc

Equatorial surface gravity: 9.780327 m/s² (0.99732 g)

Escape velocity: 11.186 km/s

Equatorial rotation velocity: 1,674.4 km/h (465.1 m/s)

Axial tilt: 23.439281 degrees

Surface temperature:
       
min     mean     max
184 K     287 K     331 K
-89 °C     14 °C     57.7 °C


Climate: tropical, subtropical, temperate, and polar

Seasons: summer, autumn, winter, spring

Surface pressure of atmosphere:    101.3 kPa (14.7 psi)

Composition of atmosphere:

78.08% Nitrogen (N2)
20.95% Oxygen (O2)
0.93% Argon
0.038% Carbon dioxide
About 1% water vapor


Earth-moon distance: 384,320 km (238,857 mi)

Earth-sun distance: 150 million km (93 million mi)

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