Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Earth

Product Information

The Mesozoic era began about 251 million years ago. This was the era when dinosaurs flourished. The Mezozoic has three periods: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Earth is the third planet from the sun, after Mercury and Venus, and before Mars. It is about 150 million kilometers (about 93 million miles) from the sun. This distance, called an astronomical unit (AU), is a standard unit of measurement in astronomy. Earth is one AU from the sun. The planet Jupiter is about 5.2 AU from the sun—about 778 million kilometers (483.5 million miles). Filled with beautiful photographs and drawings this book is both visually and mentally stunning. A great way to pass the time especially if you are a fan."— Cassandra Ms Place blog Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have atmospheres made mostly of hydrogen and helium. These planets are called gas giants, because they are mostly made of gas and do not have a solid outer crust. earth 3D, Low Earth orbit Globe Satellite, Blue Earth Science and Technology, blue, company, computer Wallpaper png 978x971px 617.86KB

planet earth, Spherical Earth Earth science Flat Earth Society, earth, globe, world, united States png 668x668px 865.96KB Each journey around the sun, a trip of about 940 million kilometers (584 million miles), is called a revolution. A year on Earth is the time it takes to complete one revolution, about 365.25 days. Earth orbits the sun at a speedy rate of about 30 kilometers per second (18.5 miles per second). Tectonic activity such as subduction and faulting has shaped the crust into a variety of landscapes. Earth’s highest point is Mount Everest, Nepal, which soars 8,850 kilometers (29,035 feet) in the Himalaya Mountains in Asia. Mount Everest continues to grow every year, as subduction drives the Indo-Australian tectonic plate below the Eurasian tectonic plate. Subduction also creates Earth’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench, about 11 kilometers (6.9 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The heavy Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the small Mariana plate.

Earth’s atmosphere is a blanket of gases enveloping Earth and retained by our planet’s gravity. Atmospheric gases include nitrogen, water vapor, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Earth is an oblate spheroid. This means it is spherical in shape, but not perfectly round. It has a slightly greater radius at the Equator, the imaginary line running horizontally around the middle of the planet. In addition to bulging in the middle, Earth’s poles are slightly flattened. The geoid describes the model shape of Earth, and is used to calculate precise surface locations.

Earth Planet, Earth, globe, computer Wallpaper, happy Birthday Vector Images png 1859x1272px 1.15MB The end of Earth will come with the end of the sun. In a few billion years, the sun will no longer be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that keep its mass and luminosity consistent. First, the sun will lose more than a quarter of its mass, which will loosen its gravitational hold on Earth. Earth’s orbit will widen to about 1.7 AU. But the sun will also gain volume, expanding to about 250 times its current size. The sun in this red giant phase will drag Earth into its own fiery atmosphere, destroying the planet.The hydrosphere is composed of all the water on Earth. Nearly three-fourths of Earth is covered in water, most of it in the ocean. Less than three percent of the hydrosphere is made up of freshwater. Most freshwater is frozen in ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica, the North American island of Greenland, and the Arctic. Freshwater can also be found underground, in chambers called aquifers, as well as rivers, lakes, and springs. The sections above were just two examples of how worldbuilding can contribute to science, however there are other examples too such as when making Interstellar (James et al., 2015), or on World of Warcraft. An important ability for any scientist is to be able to think outside the box, and to use tools others may have dismissed. I encourage all of you to let out your inner nerd, because building a model of the real world is not much different to building a fantasy world when you think about the methods employed to make each.

Earth has one natural satellite, the moon. Earth is the only planet in the solar system to have one moon. Venus and Mercury do not have any moons, for example, while Jupiter and Saturn each have more than a dozen. The crust is covered by a series of constantly moving tectonic plates. New crust is created along mid-ocean ridges and rift valleys, where plates pull apart from each other in a process called rifting. Plates slide above and below each other in a process called subduction. They crash against each other in a process called faulting. Coupled with numerous genealogical tables and a unique Chronology of the First Age, it will provide an indispensable aid to every reader’s discovery of Tolkien’s world. Earth and the rest of the solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a huge, spinning cloud of gas and dust.

The next step is to try to quantify this tidal variation for each planet and build a model, build a world. Earth is a good start, but let’s not be too specific. We shall start with Earth size and gravity, and tectonically active too because that is important. Let’s leave out continents for now, and just have an ocean world. Earth’s ocean tide, on a water-world version of Earth, would appear as two bulges in the ocean surface around 40 cm high, the currents of moving water within it simply moving one way then the other. planet Earth illustration, Atmosphere of Earth Atmosphere of Earth Space, Galaxy Universe, blue, atmosphere, computer png 2576x3307px 4.67MB John Garth’s beautifully illustrated volume, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien, reconstructs and theorizes Tolkien’s earthly sources for Middle-earth. He leaves breadcrumbs for scholars of all stripes. Whether your curiosities lie in Switzerland or South Africa, in the Aeneid or The Great Wave off Kanagawa, something is bound to reel you in."—Bécquer Seguín, Public Books Earth Globe World graphy, Creative ads Earth, Earth illustration, globe, computer Wallpaper, information Technology png 1100x733px 897.57KB