Why on Earth?

Our planet, our home, floats is space and follows an elliptical path around the Sun, scripted by celestial decree when it was born some four and a half billion years ago.

Here are some factoids:

Its name, “Earth”, is derived from old English and German language simply meaning “ground” and was so named about 1,000 years ago. All the other planets in our solar system were named after Greek and Roman dieties.

The diameter at the equator is about 12,760 kilometres (7,926 miles). The circumference is 40,075 kilometres (24,901 miles).

Earth weighs an estimated 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms or 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds. Scientific knowledge and a profound understanding of complex mathematics and the laws of gravity are required to arrive at these numbers.

By comparison, the Sun is 109 times larger than Earth and more than 1,000,000 Earths could fit inside the Sun. Earth is 149,598 million kilometres from the Sun (93 million miles). We are the fourth largest of the eight planets in our solar system.

Our planet spins at approximately 1,600 kilometres per hour (1,000 mph) and takes 23.9 hours to complete one rotation. We stream through space at an average speed of 107,827 kph (67,000 mph) and take 365.25 days to complete an orbit around the Sun (sidereal…