1.
Paris
–
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
Asteroid belt
–
The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets, the asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, the total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon, or 22% that of Pluto, and roughly twice that of Plutos moon Charon. Ceres, the belts only dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle, the asteroid material is so thinly distributed that numerous unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form a family whose members have similar orbital characteristics. Individual asteroids within the belt are categorized by their spectra. The asteroid belt formed from the solar nebula as a group of planetesimals. Planetesimals are the precursors of the protoplanets. Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter imbued the protoplanets with too much energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of fusing together, the planetesimals, as a result,99. 9% of the asteroid belts original mass was lost in the first 100 million years of the Solar Systems history. Some fragments eventually found their way into the inner Solar System, Asteroid orbits continue to be appreciably perturbed whenever their period of revolution about the Sun forms an orbital resonance with Jupiter. At these orbital distances, a Kirkwood gap occurs as they are swept into other orbits. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the objects, the centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids. On 22 January 2014, ESA scientists reported the detection, for the first definitive time, of water vapor on Ceres, the detection was made by using the far-infrared abilities of the Herschel Space Observatory. The finding was unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are considered to sprout jets. According to one of the scientists, The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids. This pattern, now known as the Titius–Bode law, predicted the semi-major axes of the six planets of the provided one allowed for a gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
3.
Mass
–
In physics, mass is a property of a physical body. It is the measure of a resistance to acceleration when a net force is applied. It also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The basic SI unit of mass is the kilogram, Mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the objects weight using a spring scale, rather than comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less than it does on Earth because of the lower gravity and this is because weight is a force, while mass is the property that determines the strength of this force. In Newtonian physics, mass can be generalized as the amount of matter in an object, however, at very high speeds, special relativity postulates that energy is an additional source of mass. Thus, any body having mass has an equivalent amount of energy. In addition, matter is a defined term in science. There are several distinct phenomena which can be used to measure mass, active gravitational mass measures the gravitational force exerted by an object. Passive gravitational mass measures the force exerted on an object in a known gravitational field. The mass of an object determines its acceleration in the presence of an applied force, according to Newtons second law of motion, if a body of fixed mass m is subjected to a single force F, its acceleration a is given by F/m. A bodys mass also determines the degree to which it generates or is affected by a gravitational field and this is sometimes referred to as gravitational mass. The standard International System of Units unit of mass is the kilogram, the kilogram is 1000 grams, first defined in 1795 as one cubic decimeter of water at the melting point of ice. Then in 1889, the kilogram was redefined as the mass of the prototype kilogram. As of January 2013, there are proposals for redefining the kilogram yet again. In this context, the mass has units of eV/c2, the electronvolt and its multiples, such as the MeV, are commonly used in particle physics. The atomic mass unit is 1/12 of the mass of a carbon-12 atom, the atomic mass unit is convenient for expressing the masses of atoms and molecules. Outside the SI system, other units of mass include, the slug is an Imperial unit of mass, the pound is a unit of both mass and force, used mainly in the United States
4.
Asteroid
–
Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
5.
Lutetia
–
The Gallo-Roman city of Lutetia was the predecessor of present-day Paris. The city was referred to as Λουκοτοκία by Strabon, Λευκοτεκία by Ptolemeus, the origin of this name is uncertain. The name may contain the Celtic root *luco-t-, which means mouse and -ekia, meaning the mice and which can be today in the Breton word logod, the Welsh llygod. Alternatively, it may derive from another Celtic root, luto- or luteuo-, which means marsh or swamp and which survives today in the Gaelic loth, as such, it would be related to other place names in Europe including Lutudarum, Lodève and Ludesse, and Lutitia. The oppidum of the Gallic tribe of the Parisii was originally believed to be on the Ile de la Cité from Caesars Gallic Wars. In 52 BC, a year or so before the end of the Gallic Wars, however the garrison led by Vercingetorixs lieutenant Camulogenus, whose army camped on the Mons Lutetius, fell to the Roman military forces led by Titus Labienus, one of Julius Caesars lieutenants. The Romans crushed the Gauls at nearby Melun and took control of Lutetia, the Gallo-Roman city was developed mainly on the hill on the south bank of the river where, starting in the 2nd century AD, public works and monuments were constructed. The northern low-lying plain was easily flooded, under Roman rule, Lutetia was thoroughly Romanised with a population estimated at around 8,000. It did not have a deal of political importance - the capital of its province. The regular grid-plan of Lutetia marked it as a Roman city, the north-south axis was dictated by the need to cross the marshy riverbanks in the shortest possible distance, several routes converged at the bridgehead. On the Left Bank, the Rue St-Jacques and on the Right Bank, an aqueduct 26 km in length, with a flow rate estimated at 2000 cubic metres a day, provided the city with spring water collected from several points. To bridge the Bièvre valley at Arcueil-Cachan, a bridge was required, whose piers and ruined arches, still discernible and it was Christianised in the 3rd century, traditionally when St Denis became the citys first bishop. After a barbarian attack in 275 a surrounding wall was built on the Ile de la Cité with a fortified keep, Lutetia was renamed Paris in 360 AD, taking its name from the Gallic Parisii tribe name. The name had already used for centuries as an adjective. The legend of the Breton city of Ys suggests a different, if less likely, the classical theatre began to be dismantled during the 4th century. For the history of the city after its renaming, see the article on Paris, remains of the ancient city are mainly buried below ground although many of these are gradually being discovered. In a small park on high ground in the Latin Quarter of the Left Bank, tucked behind apartment blocks, the amphitheatre, built into the slope of the hillside outside the city itself, is commonly referred to as Les Arènes de Lutèce. It was one of the largest such structures in Gaul, furthermore, there are the remains of public baths at the Musée de Cluny and the Early Christian archeological crypt under the Notre Dame forecourt, now Place of Pope John-Paul II
6.
Impact crater
–
An impact crater is an approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon, or other solid body in the Solar System or elsewhere, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims, Impact craters are the dominant geographic features on many solid Solar System objects including the Moon, Mercury, Callisto, Ganymede and most small moons and asteroids. Where such processes have destroyed most of the original crater topography and this indicates that there should be far more relatively young craters on the planet than have been discovered so far. Note that the rate of impact cratering in the outer Solar System could be different from the inner Solar System, although Earths active surface processes quickly destroy the impact record, about 190 terrestrial impact craters have been identified. They are also found in the stable interior regions of continents. Impact craters are not to be confused with landforms that may appear similar, including calderas, sinkholes, glacial cirques, ring dikes, salt domes, and others. Daniel Barringer was one of the first to identify an impact crater, Meteor Crater in Arizona, in the 1920s, the American geologist Walter H. Bucher studied a number of sites now recognized as impact craters in the United States. He concluded they had created by some great explosive event. However, in 1936, the geologists John D, albritton Jr. revisited Buchers studies and concluded that the craters that he studied were probably formed by impacts. The concept of impact cratering remained more or less speculative until the 1960s, armed with the knowledge of shock-metamorphic features, Carlyle S. By 1970, they had identified more than 50. Although their work was controversial, the American Apollo Moon landings, because the processes of erosion on the Moon are minimal, craters persist almost indefinitely. Since the Earth could be expected to have roughly the same cratering rate as the Moon, Impact cratering involves high velocity collisions between solid objects, typically much greater than the velocity of sound in those objects. Such hyper-velocity impacts produce physical effects such as melting and vaporization that do not occur in familiar sub-sonic collisions. On Earth, ignoring the effects of travel through the atmosphere. The fastest impacts occur at about 72 km/s in the worst case scenario in which an object in a retrograde near-parabolic orbit hits Earth, the median impact velocity on Earth is about 20 km/s. The larger the meteoroid the more of its initial cosmic velocity it preserves, while an object of 9,000 kg maintains about 6% of its original velocity, one of 900,000 kg already preserves about 70%. Extremely large bodies are not slowed by the atmosphere at all, impacts at these high speeds produce shock waves in solid materials, and both impactor and the material impacted are rapidly compressed to high density
7.
Planetary surface
–
Land is the term given to non-liquid planetary surfaces. The term landing is used to describe the collision of an object with a surface and is usually at a velocity in which the object can remain intact. In differentiated bodies, the surface is where the crust meets the boundary layer. Anything below this is regarded as being sub-surface or sub-marine, most bodies more massive than Super-Earths, including stars and gas giants, as well as smaller gas dwarfs, transition contiguously between phases including gas, liquid and solids. As such they are regarded as lacking surfaces. Planetary surfaces and surface life are of particular interest to humans as it the primary habitat of the species, human space exploration and space colonization therefore focuses heavily on them. Humans have only directly explored the surface of the Earth and Moon, the vast distances of space and the complexities of makes direct exploration of even Near-Earth objects dangerous and expensive. As such, all other exploration has been indirect via Space probes, indirect observations by flyby or orbit currently provide insufficient information to confirm the composition and properties of planetary surfaces. Much of what is known is from the use of such as astronomical spectroscopy. Lander spacecraft have explored the surfaces of planets Mars and Venus, Mars is the only other planet to have had its surface explored by a mobile surface probe. Titan is the only object of planetary mass to have been explored by lander. Landers have explored several smaller bodies including 433 Eros,25143 Itokawa, Tempel 1, surface conditions, temperatures and terrain vary significantly due to a number of factors including Albedo often generated by the surfaces itself. Measures of surface conditions include surface area, surface gravity, surface temperature, surface stability may be affected by erosion through Aeolian processes, hydrology, subduction, volcanism, sediment or seismic activity. Some surfaces are dynamic while others remain unchanged for millions of years, distance, gravity, atmospheric conditions and unknown factors make exploration is both costly and risky. This necessitates the space probes for early exploration of planetary surfaces, many probes are stationary have a limited study range and generally survive on extraterrestrial surfaces for a short period, however mobile probes have surveyed larger surface areas. The first extraterrestrial planetary surface to be explored was the surface by Luna 2 in 1959. Venera 7 was the first landing of a probe on another planet on December 15,1970, NEAR Shoemaker was the first to soft land on an asteroid -433 Eros in February 2001 while Hayabusa was the first to return samples from 25143 Itokawa on 13 June 2010. Huygens soft landed and returned data from Titan on January 14,2005, there have been many failed attempts, more recently Fobos-Grunt, a sample return mission aimed at exploring the surface of Phobos
8.
Rock (geology)
–
Rock or stone is a natural substance, a solid aggregate of one or more minerals or mineraloids. For example, granite, a rock, is a combination of the minerals quartz, feldspar. The Earths outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock, rock has been used by mankind throughout history. The minerals and metals found in rocks have been essential to human civilization, three major groups of rocks are defined, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The scientific study of rocks is called petrology, which is a component of geology. At a granular level, rocks are composed of grains of minerals, the aggregate minerals forming the rock are held together by chemical bonds. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which the rock was formed, many rocks contain silica, a compound of silicon and oxygen that forms 74. 3% of the Earths crust. This material forms crystals with other compounds in the rock, the proportion of silica in rocks and minerals is a major factor in determining their name and properties. Rocks are geologically classified according to such as mineral and chemical composition, permeability, the texture of the constituent particles. These physical properties are the end result of the processes that formed the rocks, over the course of time, rocks can transform from one type into another, as described by the geological model called the rock cycle. These events produce three general classes of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, the three classes of rocks are subdivided into many groups. However, there are no hard and fast boundaries between allied rocks, hence the definitions adopted in establishing rock nomenclature merely correspond to more or less arbitrary selected points in a continuously graduated series. Igneous rock forms through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava and this magma can be derived from partial melts of pre-existing rocks in either a planets mantle or crust. Typically, the melting of rocks is caused by one or more of three processes, an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition, igneous rocks are divided into two main categories, plutonic rock and volcanic. Plutonic or intrusive rocks result when magma cools and crystallizes slowly within the Earths crust, a common example of this type is granite. Volcanic or extrusive rocks result from magma reaching the surface either as lava or fragmental ejecta, the chemical abundance and the rate of cooling of magma typically forms a sequence known as Bowens reaction series. Most major igneous rocks are found along this scale, about 64. 7% of the Earths crust by volume consists of igneous rocks, making it the most plentiful category. Of these, 66% are basalts and gabbros, 16% are granite, only 0. 6% are syenites and 0. 3% peridotites and dunites
9.
4 Vesta
–
Vesta, minor-planet designation 4 Vesta, is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres. It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, Vesta is the second-most-massive and second-largest body in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres, and it contributes an estimated 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt. It is slightly larger than Pallas, though more massive. Vesta is the last remaining rocky protoplanet of the kind that formed the terrestrial planets, numerous fragments of Vesta were ejected by collisions one and two billion years ago that left two enormous craters occupying much of Vestas southern hemisphere. Debris from these events has fallen to Earth as howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites, Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. Its maximum distance from the Sun is slightly greater than the distance of Ceres from the Sun. NASAs Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on 16 July 2011 for an exploration and left orbit on 5 September 2012 en route to its final destination. Researchers continue to examine data collected by Dawn for additional insights into the formation, Heinrich Olbers discovered Pallas in 1802, the year after the discovery of Ceres. He proposed that the two objects were the remnants of a destroyed planet and these orbital intersections were located in the constellations of Cetus and Virgo. Olbers commenced his search in 1802, and on 29 March 1807 he discovered Vesta in the constellation Virgo—a coincidence, because Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are not fragments of a larger body. Because the asteroid Juno had been discovered in 1804, this made Vesta the fourth object to be identified in the region that is now known as the asteroid belt, the discovery was announced in a letter addressed to German astronomer Johann H. Schröter dated 31 March. Gauss decided on the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta was the fourth asteroid to be discovered, hence the number 4 in its formal designation. The name Vesta, or national variants thereof, is in use with two exceptions, Greece and China. In Greek, the name adopted was the Hellenic equivalent of Vesta, Hestia, in English, in Chinese, Vesta is called the hearth-god star, 灶神星 zàoshénxīng, in contrast to the goddess Vesta, who goes by her Latin name. Upon its discovery, Vesta was, like Ceres, Pallas, the symbol representing the altar of Vesta with its sacred fire and was designed by Gauss. In Gausss conception, this was drawn, in its modern form, after the discovery of Vesta, no further objects were discovered for 38 years, and the Solar System was thought to have eleven planets. However, in 1845, new asteroids started being discovered at a rapid pace and it soon became clear that it would be impractical to continue inventing new planetary symbols indefinitely, and some of the existing ones proved difficult to draw quickly. That year, the problem was addressed by Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who suggested numbering asteroids in their order of discovery, thus, the fourth asteroid, Vesta, acquired the generic symbol ④
10.
Star
–
A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, many other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. However, most of the stars in the Universe, including all stars outside our galaxy, indeed, most are invisible from Earth even through the most powerful telescopes. Almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the stars lifetime, near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity, and many properties of a star by observing its motion through space, its luminosity. The total mass of a star is the factor that determines its evolution. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the environment affects its rotation. A plot of the temperature of stars against their luminosities produces a plot known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. Plotting a particular star on that allows the age and evolutionary state of that star to be determined. A stars life begins with the collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium. When the stellar core is sufficiently dense, hydrogen becomes steadily converted into helium through nuclear fusion, the remainder of the stars interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiative and convective heat transfer processes. The stars internal pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity, a star with mass greater than 0.4 times the Suns will expand to become a red giant when the hydrogen fuel in its core is exhausted. In some cases, it will fuse heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core, as the star expands it throws a part of its mass, enriched with those heavier elements, into the interstellar environment, to be recycled later as new stars. Meanwhile, the core becomes a remnant, a white dwarf. Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are bound and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution. Stars can form part of a much larger gravitationally bound structure, historically, stars have been important to civilizations throughout the world
11.
Malta
–
Malta, officially known as the Republic of Malta, is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies 80 km south of Italy,284 km east of Tunisia, the country covers just over 316 km2, with a population of just under 450,000, making it one of the worlds smallest and most densely populated countries. The capital of Malta is Valletta, which at 0.8 km2, is the smallest national capital in the European Union, Malta has one national language, which is Maltese, and English as an official language. John, French and British, have ruled the islands, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded the George Cross to Malta in 1942 for the countrys bravery in the Second World War. The George Cross continues to appear on Maltas national flag, the country became a republic in 1974, and although no longer a Commonwealth realm, remains a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations. Malta was admitted to the United Nations in 1964 and to the European Union in 2004, in 2008, Catholicism is the official religion in Malta. The origin of the term Malta is uncertain, and the modern-day variation derives from the Maltese language, the most common etymology is that the word Malta derives from the Greek word μέλι, meli, honey. The ancient Greeks called the island Μελίτη meaning honey-sweet, possibly due to Maltas unique production of honey, an endemic species of bee lives on the island. The Romans went on to call the island Melita, which can be considered either as a latinisation of the Greek Μελίτη or the adaptation of the Doric Greek pronunciation of the same word Μελίτα. Another conjecture suggests that the word Malta comes from the Phoenician word Maleth a haven or port in reference to Maltas many bays, few other etymological mentions appear in classical literature, with the term Malta appearing in its present form in the Antonine Itinerary. The extinction of the hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on Malta. Prehistoric farming settlements dating to the Early Neolithic period were discovered in areas and also in caves. The Sicani were the tribe known to have inhabited the island at this time and are generally regarded as being closely related to the Iberians. Pottery from the Għar Dalam phase is similar to found in Agrigento. A culture of megalithis temple builders then either supplanted or arose from this early period, the temples have distinctive architecture, typically a complex trefoil design, and were used from 4000 to 2500 BCE. Animal bones and a knife found behind an altar stone suggest that temple rituals included animal sacrifice. Tentative information suggests that the sacrifices were made to the goddess of fertility, the culture apparently disappeared from the Maltese Islands around 2500 BC. Archaeologists speculate that the builders fell victim to famine or disease
12.
Australia
–
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
