April 22, 2020 - 10 Facts About Earth
Today is Earth Day.
- The largest living thing on earth is a fungus
- Armillaria or honey mushroom
- There is 2,200 acres of this mushroom in Oregon
- Earth Used to have 2 moons
- It was about 750 miles wide, so it was very small
- It eventually crashed into our current moon
- The Earth is overdue for a pole-flip
- For the past 20 million years the poles have pretty consistently flipped every 200-300,000 years
- They occur over hundreds or thousands of years
- 70 percent of Earth’s freshwater is on Antarctica
- Its in the ice cap
- 90% is ice
- Earth’s moon gets “moonquakes”
- Similar to earthquakes but not as common
- They are caused by the tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between earth and the moon
- NASA planted a special seed to honor earth day in 2009.
- Called the Moon Tree
- Apollo 14, 1971
- astronaut Stuart Roosa
- Curious whether or not exposure to the microgravity of space would impact the growth of these seeds.
- A single popular song can consume more electricity than entire countries.
- Remember, “Despacito”
- Streamed more than 4.6 billion times worldwide
- “used as much electricity as the combined annual electricity consumption of Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic,”
- According to the EPA, the first Earth Day in 1970 inspired the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.
- Twenty of the warmest years on record worldwide have occurred in the past 22 years.
- Using a dishwasher is more eco-friendly than hand-washing dishes, according to a recent study from the University of Michigan.