Quotes About Earth

These early, single-celled organisms unwittingly transformed Earth's carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into one with sufficient oxygen to allow aerobic organisms to emerge and dominate the oceans and land.

One could make a compelling argument that we know more about the universe than the marine biologist knows about the bottom of the ocean or the geologist knows about the center of Earth. Far from an existence as powerless stargazers, modern astrophysicists are armed to the teeth with the tools and techniques of spectroscopy, enabling us all to stay firmly planted on Earth, yet finally touch the stars (without burning our fingers) and claim to know them as never before.

This general flattening of objects that rotate is why Earth's pole-to-pole diameter is smaller than its diameter at the equator. Not by much: three-tenths of one percent—about twenty-six miles.

The exact orbit of Earth is controlled by the Sun's mass and the mass of all remaining planets. An object's mass and its distance is all we need to know to completely determine the effects of its gravity on Earth.

A mere sixty-five million years ago (less than two percent of Earth's past), a ten-trillion-ton asteroid hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula and obliterated more than seventy percent of Earth's flora and fauna–including all the famous outsized dinosaurs.

Earth's brightness is less than one-billionth that of the Sun, and our planet's proximity to the Sun would make it extremely hard for anybody to see Earth directly with a visible light telescope.

One substantial hunk of junk led to the formation of the Moon. The unexpected scarcity of iron and other higher-mass elements in the Moon, derived from lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts, indicates that the Moon most likely burst forth from Earth's iron-poor crust and mantle after a glancing collision with a wayward Mars-sized protoplanet.

Thus, helium became the first and only element in the chemist's Periodic Table to be discovered someplace other than Earth.

the hottest part of the day on Earth is not at noon, but sometime after noon, because the ground absorbs visible light

When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them.

People who navigate by the stars know that the altitude of Polaris you observe is equal to your latitude on Earth.

Between 1 and 10 quadrillion ants live on (and in) Earth

Earth's oceans will boil away about a billion years

If you had a super-duper, jumbo-gigantic finger, and you dragged it across Earth's surface (oceans and all), Earth would feel as smooth as a cue ball.

helium became the first and only element in the chemist's Periodic Table to be discovered someplace other than Earth. Okay

But because the particle shower moves so fast relative to us and our detectors on Earth's surface, the muons experience the passage of time more slowly than we do.

most planets inhabited by intelligent observers are likely to be smaller than Earth

Voyager went further and also included a gold record album containing diverse sounds from mother Earth, including the human heartbeat, whale "songs," and musical selections from around the world, including the works of Beethoven and Chuck Berry. While this humanized the message, it's not clear whether alien ears would have a clue what they were listening to—assuming they have ears in the first place.

Even when arguing opinions, you may be surprised how potent a rational perspective can be. When illuminated by it, you fast discover that Earth supports not many tribes, but only one—the human tribe. That's when many disagreements soften, while others simply evaporate, leaving you with nothing to argue about in the first place.

Another readily detected biomarker is Earth's sustained level of the molecule methane, two thirds of which is produced by human-related activities...[including] burps and farts of domestic livestock. Natural sources...include decomposing vegetation in wetlands, and termite effluences. At this very moment, astrobiologists are arguing over the exact origin of...the copious quantities of methane on Saturn's moon Titan, where cows and termites we presume do not dwell.

At the altitude of about 23,000 miles the satellite takes 23 hours and 56 minutes to orbit Earth. Earth takes 23 hours and 56 minutes to rotate.

Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield for Earth, a burly big brother, allowing long (hundred-million-year) stretches of relative peace and quiet on Earth. Without Jupiter's protection, complex life would have a hard time becoming interestingly complex, always living at risk of extinction from a devastating impact.

Here in our solar system, a hundred-meter-wide asteroid sails into Earth every millennium or so at speeds upward of fifty thousand miles an hour, generating a destructive impact equal to 2,500 atomic bombs.

We went to the moon, looking to discover it, and we looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time.