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An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half ...
- Name of Planet Earth
- How Did The Earth Get Its Name?
- Should Earth Be capitalized?
Before exploring the origin of the name “earth,” it is crucial to take of the fact that every language has a name for planet earth. In Portuguese, the earth is known as “terra,” the Germans call it “erde,” "aarde" by the Dutch, and “dünya” in Turkey. For all the languages with different names, there is a history that explains the reason why the nam...
The modern name “earth” is believed to be at least 1,000 years old. Initially, the Anglo-Saxons elected to name the earth “erda.” Anglo-Saxons were a people of Germanic origin who conquered and occupied Great Britain in the 5thcentury. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxon name “erda” has Germanic origins. The German correspondent of...
Initially, during the periods of the early Middle English, the word “earth” was written entirely in the lowercase. However, the period of the Early Modern English changed the word “earth” to a proper noun. The word was especially capitalized when it was discussed alongside other celestial objects. Recently, things have been a bit different with mos...
- Ferdinand Bada
- Namesake. The name Earth is at least 1,000 years old. All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. However, the name Earth is a Germanic word, which simply means “the ground.”
- Potential for Life. Earth has a very hospitable temperature and mix of chemicals that have made life abundant here. Most notably, Earth is unique in that most of our planet is covered in liquid water, since the temperature allows liquid water to exist for extended periods of time.
- Size and Distance. With an equatorial diameter of 7926 miles (12,760 kilometers), Earth is the biggest of the terrestrial planets and the fifth largest planet in our solar system.
- Orbit and Rotation. As Earth orbits the Sun, it completes one rotation every 23.9 hours. It takes 365.25 days to complete one trip around the Sun. That extra quarter of a day presents a challenge to our calendar system, which counts one year as 365 days.
Pangea, supercontinent that incorporated almost all of Earth’s landmasses in early geologic time. Fully assembled by the Early Permian Epoch (some 299 million to about 273 million years ago), it began to break apart about 200 million years ago, eventually forming the modern continents and the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Mar 5, 2024 · Pangaea was a massive supercontinent that formed between 320 million and 195 million years ago. At that time, Earth didn't have seven continents, but instead one giant one, which was surrounded...
Feb 28, 2020 · The oldest of the geologic eons is the Hadean, which began about 4.6 billion years ago with the formation of Earth and ended about 4 billion years ago with the appearance of the first single-celled organisms. This eon is named after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, and during this period the Earth was extremely hot.
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Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, all unknown in classical times, were named by the modern astronomers who discovered them, but still after Greek and Roman gods. Earth is the one exception.
