5 Interesting Facts About Earth

in #nature5 years ago

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Earth is constantly on the move.
You may feel like you're standing still, but you're actually moving fast. Depending on where you are on the globe, you could be spinning through Space at just over 1,000 miles per hour. People on the equator move the fastest, while someone standing on the North or South pole would be perfectly still.

The Mariana Trench is the deepest point on Earth.
How low can you go? The deepest point on the ocean floor is 35,813 feet (10,916 meters) below sea level in the Mariana Trench. The lowest point on Earth not covered by ocean is 8,382 feet (2,555) meters below sea level, but good luck walking there: That spot is in the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica, buried under lots and lots of ice.

Some lakes on Earth can explode.
In Cameroon and on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo there are three deadly lakes: Nyos, Monoun and Kivu. All three are crater lakes that sit above volcanic earth. Magma below the surface releases carbon dioxide into the lakes, resulting in a deep, carbon dioxide rich layer right above the lakebed. That carbon dioxide can be released in an explosion, asphyxiating any passersby.

The Earth is electric.
Thunder and lightning reveal our planet's fiercer side. A single stroke of lightning can heat the air to around 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius), according to educational website Windows to the Universe, causing the air to expand rapidly. That ballooning air creates a shock wave and ultimately a boom, better known as thunder.
It's been estimated that there are about 6,000 lightning flashes around the Earth every minute.

There was once a supercontinent (all countries were connected together) on Earth.
The Earth's continents are said to have collided to become supercontinents and broken apart again several times in Earth's 4.5 billion year history. The most recent supercontinent was Pangaea, which began to break apart about 200 million years ago, the landmasses that comprised Pangaea eventually wandered into the current configuration of continents.

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