Earth, the third planet from the sun, is the fifth-largest planet in the solar system; only the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are bigger. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets of the inner solar system, bigger than Mercury, Venus and Mars. But how big is Earth, exactly?
The radius of Earth at the equator is 3, 963 miles (6, 378 kilometers), according to NASA's Goddard Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. However, Earth is not quite a sphere. The planet's rotation causes it to bulge at the equator. Earth's polar radius is 3, 950 miles (6, 356 km) — a difference of 13 miles (22 km).
Using those measurements, the equatorial circumference of Earth is about 24, 901 miles (40, 075 km). However, from pole to pole — the meridional circumference — Earth is only 24, 860 miles (40, 008 km) around. Our planet's shape, caused by the flattening at the poles, is called an oblate spheroid.
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Those numbers make Earth just slightly bigger than Venus, whose equatorial radius is about 3, 761 miles (6, 052 km) (opens in new tab). Mars is much smaller than both Earth and Venus, with an equatorial radius of just 2, 110 miles (3, 396 km) (opens in new tab).
But Earth and the other rocky planets are much smaller than the gas giants. For example, more than 1, 300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter (opens in new tab).
Earth's density is 5.513 grams per cubic centimeter, according to NASA. Earth is the densest planet in the solar system because of its metallic core and rocky mantle. Jupiter, which is 318 more massive than Earth, is less dense because it is made primarily of gases, such as hydrogen.
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The total surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles (510 million square km). About 71% of our planet is covered by water and 29% by land. For comparison, the total surface area of Venus is roughly 178 million square miles (460 million square km) , and that of Mars is about 56 million square miles (144 million square km)
Mount Everest is the highest place on Earth above sea level, at 29, 032 feet (8, 849 meters), but it is not the highest point on Earth — that is, the place most distant from the center of the Earth. That distinction belongs to Mount Chimaborazo in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Although Chimaborazo is about 10, 000 feet (3, 048 m) shorter (relative to sea level) than Everest, this mountain is about 6, 800 feet (2, 073 m) farther into because of the equatorial bulge.
Everest and Chimborazo are nowhere near the tallest mountains in the solar system, however. The peak rising from Rheasilvia Crater on the asteroid Vesta, for example, is about 14 miles (22.5 km) tall. Mars' huge Olympus Mons volcano is nearly as high, at 13.6 miles (21.9 km), and it covers an area the size of the state of Arizona.
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The lowest point on Earth is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, according to NOAA. It reaches down about 36, 200 feet (11, 034 m) below sea level.
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Tim Sharp is the Reference Editor for . He manages articles that explain scientific concepts, describe natural phenomena and define technical terms. Previously, he was a Technology Editor at The New York Times and the Online Editor at the Des Moines Register. He was also a copy editor at several newspapers. Before joining Purch, Tim was a developmental editor at the Hazelden Foundation. He has a journalism degree from the University of Kansas. Follow Tim on Google+ and @therealtimsharpEarthrise (1968). Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders recalled, "Wh I looked up and saw the Earth coming up on this very stark, beat-up Moon horizon, I was immediately almost overcome with the thought, 'Here we came all this way to the Moon, and yet the most significant thing we’re seeing is our own home planet, the Earth.'"
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The most promint common aspects of personally expericing the Earth from space are appreciation and perception of beauty, unexpected and ev overwhelming emotion, and an increased sse of connection to other people and the Earth as a whole.
With recognition of the cost and vironmtal pollution involved in actual space travel, immersive virtual reality simulations have be designed to try to induce the overview effect in earthbound participants.
Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson "Earth gazing" in the Cupola module of the International Space Station, a practice found to have positive psychological effects, one that is especially important in coping with the demands of spaceflight
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Broadly, Yad et al. (2016) state that the most promint common aspects of the astronauts' experice were appreciation and perception of beauty, unexpected and ev overwhelming emotion, and an increased sse of connection to other people and the Earth as a whole.
More specifically, they write that the effect might best be understood as "a state of awe with self-transcdt qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus".
Yad posited that the overview effect triggers awe through both perceptual vastness (like seeing the Grand Canyon) and conceptual vastness (like contemplating big ideas like infinity).
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Yad et al. (2016) write that some astronauts viewing Earth from space "report overwhelming emotion and feelings of idtification with humankind and the planet as a whole".
Yad et al. observed that cultural differces, including differces in religious and social idtity, affect the ways in which the effect is expericed and interpreted.
Author Frank White, who in the 1980s coined the term overview effect after interviewing many astronauts, said that the overview effect is "beyond words", requiring experice to understand, ev liking it in this regard to Z Buddhism.
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He said that astronauts' very first views of the planet were gerally very significant, adding that some experice the effect "in a momt" while in others it grows over time; and gerally that the effect "does accumulate".
Further, White distinguished experices in low Earth orbit where the planet takes up most of an astronaut's view, from experices on the Moon in which one sees the whole Earth "against a backdrop of the tire cosmos".
He described a "big differce" betwe professional astronauts, who are focused on their missions—versus people who have rectly be going into space "with an inttion to have an experice" and who may already be aware of the overview effect.
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Beginning in the 2010s, scice historian Jordan Bimm argued against White's interpretation that the overview effect is, in Bimm's words, "a reliably produced mtal effect—a naturally occurring phomon betwe the vironmt and the human mind".
Instead, Bimm asserts that the effect is "both a natural and cultural object" that is variable over particular individuals, divergt cultures, and differt time periods.
Preliminarily, Bimm noted that studies of early test pilots' negative-experice break-off phomon ded in 1973 (displaced by White's "positive conversion narrative"), that astronauts in a "lie to fly" culture feel career pressure to avoid reporting negative psychological reactions, and that individuals already aware of the overview effect may make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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He posited that it was Cold War and mastery-of-Earth mtalities of Western technological supremacy that contributed to the rise of borderless-world concepts such as the Gaia hypothesis, spaceship Earth, and the Blue Marble.
Bimm expressed concern over White's perception that the effect embodies a natural imperative for humans to pursue space travel and colonization, Bimm saying the attitude resembles the 18th ctury American colonialist, expansionist concept of manifest destiny.
The Blue Marble—Earth as se by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972. Early photos of Earth tak from space inspired a mild version of the overview effect in earthbound non-astronauts, and became promint symbols of vironmtal concern.
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Glish astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote in 1948 that, "once a photograph of the Earth, tak from the outside, is available, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose".
After Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders' December 1968 Earthrise photograph of the Earth from lunar orbit, the Apollo missions were credited with inspiring the vironmtal movemt, the first Earth Day being held in April 1970.
Hoyle said that people suddly seemed to care about protecting Earth's natural vironmt, though others attribute that awaress to Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silt Spring and reactions to several vironmtal disasters in the 1960s.
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The term overview effect was coined by self-described "space philosopher" Frank White, who said he thought he first had "a mild experice" of the effect while flying across the country and looking out the aircraft's window.
That experice led him to imagine living in an O'Neill cylinder (habitat in space), which inspired him to become involved with the Space Studies Institute and begin speaking with astronauts.
White's astronaut interviews confirmed the importance of the differce betwe intellectual knowledge versus experice, of perceiving the "striking thinness of the atmosphere", of thinking of ourselves interconnected and part of the Earth as an organic system, and that we as differt people "are
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