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The Earth Essay

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Did u know that our planet, Earth wasn’t always thought of as a planet? Until the sixteenth century when Capernicus figured out that the Earth was another planet, which revolved around the sun, Greek astronomers thought the Earth was the center of the solar system. Also Earth is the only planet that its name didn’t come from Greek/Roman mythology.
When earth was first discovered, astronomers were only able to study it with out spacecraft. It was not until the twentieth century that we had maps of the entire planet. Pictures taken of the planet are very important, not only because they aid in weather predictions, but they are also very beautiful.
The Earth is divided into seven …show more content…

The first is spreading which occurs when two plates move away form each other and magma gets in, creating a new crust. The second is subduction, which is the opposite. When this happens two plates collide and one ends up being destroyed in the mantle. There are eight major plates: The North American Plate, South American Plate, Antarctic Plate, Eurasian Plate, African Plate, Indian-Australian Plate, Nazca Plate, and Pacific Plate. Other than these plates are about twenty small plates.
The surface of the Earth is about 4.5 ~ 4.6 billion years old, although the oldest rocks are about 4 billion years old. This is said to be rare because they are older then 3 billion years old.
Water makes up 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. Earth is also the only planet that can have water as a liquid on its surface. Water is very important on Earth because we need it to live, and without it we would be non-existent.
The Earth’s atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, but also has argon, carbon dioxide, and water. The reason there isn’t as much carbon dioxide in the Earth today is because it has turned into carbonate rocks, was dissolved into the oceans, and consumed by living plants. The carbon dioxide that remains is very important for the Earth’s surface temperature via the greenhouse effect. “The greenhouse effect raised the average surface temperature

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