The Blue Marble, a photograph of the planet Earth made on 7 December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.
In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind.
Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.
Global village describes the phenomenon of the entire world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies throughout the world. The term was coined by Canadian media theoristMarshall McLuhan in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). Literary scholar Sue-Im Lee describes how the term global village has come to designate “the dominant term for expressing a global coexistence altered by transnational commerce, migration, and culture” (as cited in Poll, 2012). Economic journalist Thomas Friedman's definition of the global village as a world “tied together into a single globalized marketplace and village” is another contemporary understanding of the term (as cited in Poll, 2012). (Full article...)
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Nao Victoria, the only ship in the fleet to complete the circumnavigation. Detail from a map by Abraham Ortelius, 1590.
The Magellan expedition, sometimes termed the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was a 16th-century Spanish expedition planned and led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. One of the most important voyages in the Age of Discovery—and in the history of exploration—its purpose was to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to open a trade route with the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in present-day Indonesia. The expedition departed Spain in 1519 and returned there in 1522 led by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, who crossed the Indian Ocean after Magellan's death in the Philippines. Totaling 60,440 km, or 37,560 mi, the nearly three-year voyage achieved the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. It also revealed the vast scale of the Pacific Ocean and proved that ships could sail around the world on a western sea route.
The expedition accomplished its primary goal—to find a western route to the Spice Islands. The five-ship fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519 with about 270 men. After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, the fleet continued south along the eastern coast of South America, and eventually discovered the Strait of Magellan, allowing the ships to pass through to the Pacific Ocean, which Magellan himself named Mar Pacifico. The fleet completed the first Pacific crossing, stopped in the Philippines, and eventually reached the Moluccas after two years. A much-depleted crew led by Elcano finally returned to Spain on 6 September 1522, having sailed west across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope through waters controlled by the Portuguese, and north along the west African coast to finally arrive in Spain. (Full article...)
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The World Rally Championship (abbreviated as WRC) is an international rallying series owned and governed by the FIA. Inaugurated in 1973, it is the second oldest of the FIA's world championships after Formula One. Each season lasts one calendar year, and separate championship titles are awarded to drivers, co-drivers and manufacturers. There are also two support championships, WRC2 and WRC3, which are contested on the same events and stages as the WRC, but with progressively lower maximum performance and running costs of the cars permitted. Junior WRC is also contested on five events of the World Rally Championship calendar.
A WRC season typically consists of 13 three- to four-day rally events driven on surfaces ranging from gravel and tarmac to snow and ice. Each rally is usually split into 15–25 special stages which are run against the clock on up to 350 kilometres (220 mi) of closed roads. (Full article...)
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Artist's concept of the Earth 5–7.5 billion years from now, when the Sun has become a red giant
While the future cannot be predicted with certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which studies how planets and stars form, interact and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which studies how life evolves over time; plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia; and sociology, which examines how human societies and cultures evolve.
These timelines begin at the start of the 4th millennium in 3001 CE, and continue until the furthest and most remote reaches of future time. They include alternative future events that address unresolved scientific questions, such as whether humans will become extinct, whether the Earth survives when the Sun expands to become a red giant and whether proton decay will be the eventual end of all matter in the universe. (Full article...)
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A free trade area is the region encompassing a trade bloc whose member countries have signed a free trade agreement (FTA). Such agreements involve cooperation between at least two countries to reduce trade barriers, import quotas and tariffs, and to increase trade of goods and services with each other. If natural persons are also free to move between the countries, in addition to a free trade agreement, it would also be considered an open border. It can be considered the second stage of economic integration.
Customs unions are a special type of free trade area. All such areas have internal arrangements which parties conclude in order to liberalize and facilitate trade among themselves. The crucial difference between customs unions and free trade areas is their approach to third parties. While a customs union requires all parties to establish and maintain identical external tariffs with regard to trade with non-parties, parties to a free trade area are not subject to this requirement. Instead, they may establish and maintain whatever tariff regime applying to imports from non-parties as deemed necessary. In a free trade area without harmonized external tariffs, to eliminate the risk of trade deflection, parties will adopt a system of preferential rules of origin. (Full article...)
Public interest in space travel originated in the 1951 publication of a Soviet youth magazine and was promptly picked up by US magazines. The competition began on July 30, 1955, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year. Four days later, the Soviet Union responded by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The launching of satellites was enabled by developments in ballistic missile capabilities since the end of World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the "Sputnik crisis", when the USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. It gained momentum when the USSR sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space with the orbital flight of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. These were followed by a string of other early firsts achieved by the Soviets over the next few years. (Full article...)
The controversies are, by now, mostly political rather than scientific: there is a scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity. Public debates that also reflect scientific debate include estimates of how responsive the climate system might be to any given level of greenhouse gases (climate sensitivity). Disputes over the key scientific facts of global warming are more prevalent in the media than in the scientific literature, where such issues are treated as resolved, and such disputes are more prevalent in the United States and Australia than globally. (Full article...)
Image 4A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Image 5A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Image 7The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Image 11Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 12Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
Image 24Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 25Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Image 33A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Image 34Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years in the future (from Earth)
Image 36An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
Image 45A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
Image 46Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
Image 47A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Image 49Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
Image 52Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
Image 56Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale. Ma means "million years ago". (from History of Earth)
Image 57Artist's impression of Earth during the later Archean, the largely cooled planetary crust and water-rich barren surface, marked by volcanoes and continents, features already roundmicrobialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (from History of Earth)
Image 59Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible). Continuing with green and red bands of aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Image 73Exaggerated illustration of Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun, marking that the orbital extreme points (apoapsis and periapsis) are not the same as the four seasonal extreme points, the equinox and solstice (from Earth)
Image 74Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Image 82An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
Image 86Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
The city's history dates back to around 890, as per the old Kannada stone inscription found at the Nageshwara Temple in Begur, Bangalore. In 1537, Kempé Gowdā, a feudal ruler under the Vijayanagara Empire, established a mud fort, considered the foundation of modern Bangalore and its oldest areas, or pétés, which still exist. After the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire, Kempe Gowda declared independence; in 1638, a large Adil Shahi Bijapur army defeated Kempe Gowda III, and Bangalore came under Shahaji Bhonsle as a jagir, which later became his capital. The Mughals later captured Bangalore and sold it to MaharajaDevaraja Wodeyar II of the Kingdom of Mysore. When Haider Ali seized control of the kingdom, Bangalore's administration passed into his hands. (Full article...)
... that Misti is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world?
... that the first line to STU48's "Hana wa Dare no Mono?", which imagines a world without borders, is often misheard as wishing for a world without Tokyo?
... that when visiting Britain during World War II, naval officer Kalyani Sen reported that Indian women were breaking down prejudices against men and women working together by joining the military?
... that Austrian master metalsmith Cyril Colnik chose to close his shop rather than make armaments for World War I?
... that the joint National War Fund was created during World War II so that American citizens would not get annoyed by multiple donation requests for service members' support and overseas relief?
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-western half, and the minor islands of Atauro and Jaco. The western half of the island of Timor is administered by Indonesia. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea. The country's size is 14,950 square kilometres (5,770 sq mi). Dili, on the north coast of Timor, is its capital and largest city.
Timor was settled by Papuan and Austronesian peoples, which are reflected in the country's diverse mix of cultures and languages, displaying links to Southeast Asia and Melanesia. East Timor came under Portuguese influence in the sixteenth century, remaining a Portuguese colony until 1975. Internal conflict preceded a unilateral declaration of independence and an Indonesian invasion and annexation. Resistance continued throughout Indonesian rule and in 1999, a United Nations–sponsored act of self-determination led to Indonesia relinquishing control of the territory. On 20 May 2002, as Timor-Leste, it became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. That same year, relations with Indonesia were established and normalized, with Indonesia also supporting East Timor's accession into ASEAN. (Full article...)
The voting for all contests consisted of two parts: experts in Ukraine voted for their seven best sites, and internet users voted for their seven favorite sites on the official website. (Full article...)
Estonia has five national parks, 167 nature reserves and 152 landscape conservation areas. In addition, there are 116 (118) protected areas with an old (Soviet-era) protection regulation and 537 parks. In total, 18.1% of Estonia are protected nature areas, with Lääne County having the highest percentage (32%) and Põlva County the lowest percentage of protected areas, about 9%. (Full article...)
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Forests in the state of Himachal Pradesh (northern India) currently cover an area of nearly 37,939 square kilometres (14,648 sq mi), which is about 68.16% of the total land area of the state. The forests were once considered to be the main source of income of the state and most of the original forests were clear felled. The emphasis has shifted, however, from exploitation to conservation. The state government aims to increase forest cover to 50% of the total land area. There have been various projects, including the establishment of protected areas such as National Parks, designed to preserve and expand the forests. (Full article...)
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Protected areas of Ukraine (Ukrainian: охоронні території) are special areas of Ukraine established with the goal of protecting the natural and cultural heritage of the country from excessive changes as a result of human activity. The protection of the areas is the responsibility of the government of Ukraine, specifically the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
Upolu Island, Samoa This is a list of some protected areas of Samoa which include national parks, reservations, protected nature zones, marine reserves and other areas of significant biodiversity and conservation.
In 1994, Samoa ratified the international and legally binding treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity to develop national strategies for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. In 2010, protected areas in the country cover 5% of land although the government aims to increase protected areas coverage to 15%. (Full article...)
Protected areas may also be protected for their value and importance as historical, cultural heritage or scientific sites. More information on these can be found in the list of heritage sites in South Africa. (Full article...)
The mountain of Stob Binnein lies in the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Many parts of Scotland are protected in accordance with a number of national and international designations because of their environmental, historical or cultural value. Protected areas can be divided according to the type of resource which each seeks to protect. NatureScot has various roles in the delivery of many environmental designations in Scotland, i.e. those aimed at protecting flora and fauna, scenic qualities and geological features. Historic Environment Scotland is responsible for designations that protect sites of historic and cultural importance. Some international designations, such as World Heritage Sites, can cover both categories of site.
The various designations overlap considerably with many protected areas being covered by multiple designations with different boundaries. (Full article...)
Greece is characterized by an extremely fragmented, rugged landscape hosting a great diversity of ecosystems and an outstanding biodiversity. Almost 5% of its extensive coastline consists of ecologically sensitivewetlands. Two thirds of the total population live no further than 2 km from the coast and most of the important urban centers are coastal, while almost all of the tourist infrastructure is divided among islands and the coastal mainland. (Full article...)
Image 1Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
Global village describes the phenomenon of the entire world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies throughout the world. The term was coined by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). Literary scholar Sue-Im Lee describes how the term global village has come to designate “the dominant term for expressing a global coexistence altered by transnational commerce, migration, and culture” (as cited in Poll, 2012). Economic journalist Thomas Friedman's definition of the global village as a world “tied together into a single globalized marketplace and village” is another contemporary understanding of the term (as cited in Poll, 2012). (Full article...)
Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
"Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found, was only 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in) tall.
The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
13th-century French historiated initial with the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry) (from Human history)
Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
A 580 million year old fossil of Spriggina floundensi, an animal from the Ediacaran period. Such life forms could have been ancestors to the many new forms that originated in the Cambrian Explosion. (from History of Earth)
Ajloun Castle, Jordan
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Lithified stromatolites on the shores of Lake Thetis, Western Australia. Archean stromatolites are the first direct fossil traces of life on Earth. (from History of Earth)
Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Battle during the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 (from Human history)
Pillar erected by Ashoka, a Mauryan Emperor in India
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
Peopling of the world, the Southern Dispersal scenario
A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
A banded iron formation from the 3.15 Ga Moodies Group, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Red layers represent the times when oxygen was available; gray layers were formed in anoxic circumstances. (from History of Earth)
Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
A view of Earth with different layers of its atmosphere visible: the troposphere with its clouds casting shadows, a band of stratospheric blue sky at the horizon, and a line of green airglow of the lower thermosphere around an altitude of 100 km, at the edge of space (from Earth)
Empires of the world in 1898
Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale. Ma means "million years ago". (from History of Earth)
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible). Continuing with green and red bands of aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a NASA astronaut, observing Earth from the Cupola module at the International Space Station on 11 September 2010 (from Earth)
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
A composite image of Earth, with its different types of surface discernible: Earth's surface dominating Ocean (blue), Africa with lush (green) to dry (brown) land and Earth's polar ice in the form of Antarctic sea ice (grey) covering the Antarctic or Southern Ocean and the Antarctic ice sheet (white) covering Antarctica. (from Earth)
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
Pale orange dot, an artist's impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Carving of Persian and Median soldiers, Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 5th century BCE
An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
Cuneiform inscription, eastern Turkey
Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
One of the eleven Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela constructed during the Zagwe dynasty in Ethiopia (from Human history)
A pillar at Göbekli Tepe
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Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
Mollweide projection of the world
The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Time zones of the world
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
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