EARTH, OUR HOME planet, is a world unlike any other.

The third
planet from the sun, Earth is the only place in the known universe
confirmed to host life.

With a radius of 3,959 miles, Earth is the fifth largest planet in our
solar system, and it's the only one known for sure to have liquid
water on its surface. Earth is also unique in terms of monikers. Every
other solar system planet was named for a Greek or Roman deity, but
for at least a thousand years, some cultures have described our world
using the Germanic word “earth,” which means simply “the ground.”

Our dance around the sun

Earth orbits the sun once every 365.25 days. Since our calendar years
have only 365 days, we add an extra leap day every four years to
account for the difference.

Though we can't feel it, Earth zooms through its orbit at an average
velocity of 18.5 miles a second. During this circuit, our planet is an
average of 93 million miles away from the sun, a distance that takes
light about eight minutes to traverse. Astronomers define this
distance as one astronomical unit (AU), a measure that serves as a
handy cosmic yardstick.

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Earth rotates on its axis every 23.9 hours, defining day and night for
surface dwellers. This axis of rotation is tilted 23.4 degrees away
from the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun, giving us seasons.
Whichever hemisphere is tilted closer to the sun experiences
summer, while the hemisphere tilted away gets winter. In the spring
and fall, each hemisphere receives similar amounts of light. On two
specific dates each year—called the equinoxes—both hemispheres get
illuminated equally.

Many layers, many features

About 4.5 billion years ago, gravity coaxed Earth to form from the
gaseous, dusty disk that surrounded our young sun. Over time,
Earth's interior—which is made mostly of silicate rocks and metals—
differentiated into four layers.

At the planet's heart lies the inner core, a solid sphere of iron and
nickel that's 759 miles wide and as hot as 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
The inner core is surrounded by the outer core, a 1,400-mile-thick
band of iron and nickel fluids. Beyond the outer core lies the mantle,
a 1,800-mile-thick layer of viscous molten rock on which Earth's
outermost layer, the crust, rests. On land, the continental crust is an
average of 19 miles thick, but the oceanic crust that forms the
seafloor is thinner—about three miles thick—and denser.