Interesting Facts About The Earth: She's Got a Waistline

Mother Earth has a generous waistline: At the equator, the circumference of the globe is 24,901 miles (40,075 kilometers).



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Interesting Facts About The Earth: Squashed Sphere

It's not a perfect sphere. As Earth spins, gravity points toward the center of our planet (assuming for explanation's sake that Earth is a perfect sphere), and a centrifugal force pushes outward. But since this gravity-opposing force acts perpendicular to the axis of Earth, and Earth's axis is tilted, centrifugal force at the equator is not exactly opposed to gravity. This imbalance adds up at the equator, where gravity pushes extra masses of water and earth into a bulge, or "spare tire" around our planet.

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Interesting Facts About The Earth: Elegant Earth Third Rock

Credit: NASA/NOAA

Alien worlds may be all the rage, with their mystique and promise, but the orb we call home, planet Earth, has all the makings for a jaw-dropping blockbuster movie: from the drama of explosive volcanoes, past meteor crashes and catastrophic collisions between rocky plates to the seeming fantasy of the ocean's deep abysses swirling with odd life and tales of the coldest, hottest, deepest, highest and all-out extreme spots. 

Our home, Earth, is the third planet from the sun and the only world known to support an atmosphere with free oxygen, oceans of liquid water on the surface and — the big one — life. 

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