About Planet Earth

Earth is the planet we live on, which is located in our solar system. It is the third planet in line from the sun, following Mercury and Venus. Planet Earth is the most massive terrestrial planet in this solar system, in other words Earth is the largest land-based planet, but there are gas-based planets like Saturn which are larger.

As far as we know, there is no other planet aside from Earth where life can possible exist., such as the ozone layer which keeps dangerous radiation away from the Earth, and the Earth's magnetic field. It is believed that life on Earth can survive for another 1.5 billion years.

The planet is divided into tectonic plates, which over very long periods of time (millions of years) migrate over the surface of the Earth. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans with salt water, and the remainder is made up of land and islands.

Earth completes one orbit of the Sun approximately every 365 1/4 days. And because of the Earth's tilted angle of 23.4 degrees, seasonal variation occurs as the planet orbits around the Sun.

The Earth's large land masses are generally divided into seven different "continents". These contients are Australia, Europe, South America, Antarctica, North America, Asia, and Africa. These continents all feature different climatic and weather variation depending on their location on the Earth based on latitude and longitude, as well as elevation and other factors. Locations in close proximity to the equator usually have much less seasonal variation and boast a tropical climate all year-round.

With the exception of Antarctica which is mostly uninhabitable, the continents all have fairly large human populations. Asia has by far the largest population with approximately 3.9 billion people. Africa is in second place with a total population of around 922 million. Europe is in third place with around 731 million people. North America is fourth with 528,729,588 people. South America has a population of around 382 million, putting it in fifth place.. Australia is in 6th place with its relatively small population of 32 million. And in last place is Antarctica with a small population of around 1000, mostly researchers. China and India (sometimes referred to as Chindia) both have huge populations of over 1 billion each.