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Interesting Facts About Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and, in terms of size and mass, the fifth largest planet in the solar system. Its most notable feature is that its near-surface environments are the only places in the universe where life has been discovered. It is represented by the symbol. The name Earth derives from Old English and Germanic words for ground and earth in English, the international language of astronomy, and it is the only name for a planet in the solar system that does not come from Greco-Roman mythology.Since the 16th century Copernican revolution, when the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a Sun-centered model of the universe (see heliocentric system), enlightened thinkers have regarded Earth as a planet like the others in the solar system. Concurrent sea voyages provided practical proof that Earth is a globe, just as Galileo's use of his newly invented telescope in the early 17th century quickly demonstrated that various other planets are also globes. However, it wasn't until the dawn of the space age, when photographs from rockets and orbiting spacecraft first captured the dramatic curvature of Earth's horizon, that the concept of Earth as a roughly spherical planet, rather than a flat entity, was confirmed by direct human observation.When Apollo 8 carried astronauts around the Moon in December 1968, humans saw Earth for the first time as a complete orb floating in the inky blackness of space. Robotic space probes on their way to destinations beyond Earth, such as the Galileo and Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft in the 1990s, used their cameras to provide additional unique portraits of the planet.