Earth Day is April 22nd and is a day dedicated to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement to protect our planet.
Click to see pictures of our amazing planet from NASA.
Earth Day Network does this through advocacy, education, public policy, and consumer campaigns each year with this year’s theme being A Billion Acts of Green with the goal is to register one billion actions before the global Earth Summit in Rio in 2012.
Since its start in 1970, Earth Day activities grow more and more popular each year and have helped make the day one of the largest civil observances in the world.
To help celebrate the planet we call home, we are giving you 25 fun facts about mother Earth (Facts from NASA.GOV & USGS.).
Check out the amazing images of Earth courtesy of NASA. (You don’t want to miss these shots.)
1. Earth is the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life… or is it.
2. The Earth is the third planet from the sun.
3. Earth is 93 million miles away from the sun.
4. Oceans cover almost 70% of the planet’s surface.
5. The four seasons are a result of Earth’s axis of rotation being tilted 23.45 degrees with respect to Earth’s orbit around the sun.
6. Earth’s atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% other ingredients.
7. Earth’s atmosphere protects us from meteors most of which burn up before they can strike the surface.
8. The warmest sea in the world is the Red Sea which ranges from 68 to 87.8 degrees.
9. All of the planets are named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses except for Earth which is an English/German world meaning the ground.
10.Earth is the fifth largest in our solar system, it’s diameter is just a few hundred kilometers larger than that Venus.
11. Mariana Trench is the deepest trench in the world, it’s the deepest part of the world’s oceans and the lowest elevation of the surface of the Earth’s crust. (Fact from Wikipedia) It’s thought to be 6.78 miles deep.
12. Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth it’s around 29,029 feet high and grows about 4 mm each year due to plate tectonics.
13. It takes 365.26 days for Earth to revolve around the sun and a day is 23 hours 56 minutes and 04 seconds long.
14. Earth is located in the Milky Way Galaxy.
15. Earth is also known as the World, Blue Planet or Terra.
16. Earth is the largest of the Solar System’s four terrestrial planets.
17. It has a gravity of around 9.81.
18. Earth is only expected to continue supporting life for another 500 million years.
19. Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago and life appeared within one billion years.
20. Earth’s equatorial diameter is almost 8,000 miles .
21. The Pacific Ocean is one of the largest features on the face of the Earth with over 70 million square miles.
22. Earth first had one continent named Pangaea and broke into the seven main continents we have today.
23. Earth’s sun is one of 200 billion stars banded together by gravity in the Milky Way.
24. The Earth is 3/5ths of the way out of the galaxy’s center.
25. Earth is the only planet that water can exist on the planet’s surface.
If you’re not looking inward today, look outward or watch this beautiful video of the Milky Way shot from Teide Observatories in Spain.