Age
The Earth is 4.56 billion years old...the same age as the Moon and the Sun.Earthquakes
A magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, on Sunday morning at 6:58 a.m. local time December 26, 2004.
The giant tremor devastated the Indonesian province of Aceh, and created destructive tsunami waves that crashed onto far away beaches in Sri Lanka,
Thailand, India and other countries. Reports of at least 140,000 dead and thousands still missing, mostly from the tsunamis. As a result, the Earth actually shifted 3 degrees and has not went back since.
The world's largest recorded earthquakes are all megathrust events occurring at subduction zones. This magnitude-9.0 quake is the largest in 40 years, since the Good Friday earthquake in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964. It is the fourth largest in the last century, following only a 9.0 in Kamchatka in 1952, a 9.1 in Alaska in 1957, the 9.2 Prince William Sound quake, and the largest ever recorded, a magnitude-9.5 earthquake in Chile in 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. All five events are megathrust quakes at subduction zones
Earthquakes
Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.Islands
The Philippine Archipelago comprises about 7,641 islands clustered into three major island groups: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao.
Only about 2,000 islands are inhabited, and more than 5,000 are yet to be officially named.
It would take you almost 21 years to visit every island if you spent one day on each of them.Islands
Tomorrow Island (Big Diomede) and Yesterday Island (Little Diomede).The Diomede islands are just three miles apart but the bigger island is almost one day ahead of its smaller neighbour (21 hours) because they sit on either side of the International Date Line which passes through the Pacific Ocean and marks the boundary between one calendar day and the next. They sit in the Bering Strait between mainland Alaska and Siberia
Big Diomede is located on the Russian side while Little Diomede is on the US side. The ice bridge that forms between the two islands in winter makes it possible, although illegal, to walk the short distance between them and 'travel through time'.
Lightning
Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.Motion
The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.Nations
267, dependent areas, and misc. areas.Ocean
It’s commonly understood that oceans are deep, but at their deepest they are very deep—and the deepest part of any ocean is the Mariana Trench, located in between Japan and Papa New Guinea. If you were to drop a pebble overboard at this location, it would take just over an hour to reach the bottom of the seabed!Physical
- Diameter of 7,905 miles
- Total Area: 510,072,000 sq km
- Land: 148,940,000 sq km - 29.2%
- Water: 361,132,000 sq km - 70.8%
Population
Live World population figures:
