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 "[t]he 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.
The goals of the Red List are to provide scientifically based information on the status of species and subspecies at a global level, to draw attention to the magnitude and importance of threatened biodiversity, to influence national and international policy and decision-making, and to provide information to guide actions to conserve biological diversity. (Full article...)
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Global citizenship is a form of transnationality, specifically the idea that one's identity transcends geography or political borders and that responsibilities or rights are derived from membership in a broader global class of "humanity". This does not mean that such a person denounces or waives their nationality or other, more local identities, but that such identities are given "second place" to their membership in a global community. Extended, the idea leads to questions about the state of global society in the age of globalization.
The League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League. (Full article...)
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Animated, colour-coded map showing some continents and the region of Oceania (purple), which includes the continent of Australia. Depending on the convention and model, some continents may be consolidated or subdivided.
A continent is any of several large geographicalregions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single landmass or a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of Asia or Europe. Due to this, the number of continents varies; up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Most English-speaking countries recognize seven regions as continents. In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven regions are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Different variations with fewer continents merge some of these regions; examples of this are merging North America and South America into America, Asia and Europe into Eurasia, and Africa, Asia, and Europe into Afro-Eurasia.
Oceanic islands are occasionally grouped with a nearby continent to divide all the world's land into geographical regions. Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form the geographical region Oceania. (Full article...)
Its existence was not widely acknowledged by governments and the mainstream media until the global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden triggered a debate about the right to privacy in the Digital Age. One such debate is the balance which governments must acknowledge between the pursuit of national security and counter-terrorism over a right to privacy. Although, to quote H. Akın Ünver "Even when conducted for national security and counterterrorism purposes, the scale and detail of mass citizen data collected, leads to rightfully pessimistic observations about individual freedoms and privacy". (Full article...)
Image 2Change 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 3Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years from now (from Earth)
Image 7Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 8Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
Image 22An 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 23Earth'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 28A 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 30Pangaea 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 31A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Image 36Geologic 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 45Exaggerated 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 52A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Image 54The 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 58Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 73Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
Image 74Artist'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)
Image 75Artist'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 76Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Image 77An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Image 81An 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)
Niger or the Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a country in West Africa. It is a unitary statebordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria to the south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the southwest, Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. It covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km2 (490,000 sq mi), making it the largest landlocked country in West Africa and the second largest landlocked nation in Africa behind Chad. Over 80% of its land area lies in the Sahara. Its predominantly Muslim population of about 25 million0 lives mostly in clusters in the south and west of the country. The capital Niamey is located in Niger's southwest corner.
Following the spread of Islam to the region, Niger was on the fringes of some states, including the Kanem–Bornu Empire and the Mali Empire before more significant parts of its territory became included in states such as the Sultanate of Agadez and the Songhai Empire. It was colonized by France during the Scramble for Africa as part of French West Africa, becoming a distinct colony in 1922. Since obtaining independence in 1960, Niger has experienced five coups d'état and four periods of military rule. Niger's seventh and most recent constitution was enacted in 2010, establishing a multiparty, unitary semi-presidential system. Following the most recent coup in 2023, the country is once again under a military junta. (Full article...)
The Seven Wonders of Canada was a 2007 competition sponsored by CBC Television's The National and CBC Radio One's Sounds Like Canada. They sought to determine Canada's "seven wonders" by receiving nominations from viewers, and then from on-line voting of the short list. After the vote, a panel of judges, Ra McGuire, Roy MacGregor and Roberta L. Jamieson, picked the winners based on geographic and poetic criteria. Their seven picks were revealed on The National on June 7, 2007, making the official Seven Wonders of Canada, the Canoe, the Igloo, Niagara Falls, Old Quebec City, Pier 21 Halifax, Prairie Skies, and the Rockies. CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge commented on the top winner, “it’s hard to imagine Canada being Canada without the canoe. Explorers, missionaries, fur traders and First Nations—they’re all linked by this subtle and simple craft. To many, the quintessential Canadian experience begins by picking up a paddle. That’s why the canoe is one of the seven wonders” (Osler 2014). There were over 25,000 nominations and 1 million votes cast, according to the CBC website. The top audience votes were the Sleeping Giant, Niagara Falls, the Bay of Fundy, Nahanni National Park Reserve, the Northern Lights, the Rockies, and the Cabot Trail. The CBC website has a dedicated section for the Seven Wonders of Canada (https://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/index.html). (Full article...)
This is a list of protected areas of Yukon. The Yukon, formerly called Yukon Territory and sometimes referred to as just Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 35,874 people as of the 2016 Census. (Full article...)
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...)
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The protected areas of Nepal cover mainly forested land and are located at various altitudes in the Terai, in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the mountains, thus encompassing a multitude of landscapes and preserving a vast biodiversity in the Palearctic and Indomalayan realms. Nepal covers 147,181 km2 (56,827 sq mi) in the central part of the Himalayas. Altitudes range from 67 m (220 ft) in the south-eastern Terai to 8,848 m (29,029 ft) at Mount Everest within a short horizontal span. This extreme altitudinal gradient has resulted in 11 bio-climatic zones ranging from lower tropical below 500 m (1,600 ft) to nival above 5,000 m (16,000 ft) in the High Himalayas, encompassing nine terrestrial ecoregions with 36 vegetation types.
Additionally, nine Ramsar sites were declared between 1988 and 2008. Two wildlife reserves were declared as national parks in 2017. (Full article...)
As of 2022, based on the latest Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database report, it contains 1857 separate land-based protected areas with a total area of 76,142,710 hectares (188,152,700 acres), accounting for just over 30 percent of the state's land mass. By area, Indigenous Protected Areas account for the largest part of this, almost 67 percent while, by number, nature reserves hold the majority with two-third of all land-based protected areas being nature reserves. (Full article...)
Image 6Only 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
Image 7A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is an industry taxonomy developed in 1999 by MSCI and Standard & Poor's (S&P) for use by the global financial community. The GICS structure consists of 11 sectors, 25 industry groups, 74 industries and 163 sub-industries into which S&P has categorized all major public companies. The system is similar to ICB (Industry Classification Benchmark), a classification structure maintained by FTSE Group.
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Pale orange dot, an artist's impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
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)
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale (from History of 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)
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (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)
Peopling of the world, the Southern Dispersal scenario
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
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)
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)
Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
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)
"Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found, was only 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in) tall.
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 reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Battle during the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
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.
A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Empires of the world in 1898
Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
A pillar at Göbekli Tepe
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Ajloun Castle, Jordan
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
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)
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (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)
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
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)
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)
Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
View of Earth from the Moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (from 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)
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
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)
Artist'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 round microbialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (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)
An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
Cross-section through a liposome (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)
Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE
Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
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United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
Mollweide projection of the world
Time zones of the world
1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
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
A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
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