1.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
2.
The Blue Marble
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The Blue Marble is an image of the Earth made on December 7,1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 45,000 kilometers. It is one of the most reproduced images in human history, the image with the official NASA designation AS17-148-22727 reproduces the view of the Earth as seen by the Apollo crew traveling toward the Moon. The translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica and this was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap, despite the Southern Hemisphere being heavily covered in clouds. In addition to the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar, almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible, the Asian mainland is on the horizon. The photograph, taken by astronauts on December 7,1972, EST, is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. The image is one of the few to show an almost fully illuminated Earth disk, to the astronauts, the slightly gibbous Earth had the appearance and size of a glass marble, hence the name. The time of Apollo 17s launch,12,33 a. m, EST, meant that Africa was in daylight during the early hours of the spacecrafts flight. With the December solstice approaching, Antarctica was also illuminated, the 1972 Tamil Nadu cyclone can be seen in the top right of the image. This storm had brought flooding and high winds to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on December 5, the photographs official NASA designation is AS17-148-22727. NASA photograph AS17-148-22726, taken just before and nearly identical to 22727, is used as a full-Earth image. The photographer used a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimeter Zeiss lens, Apollo 17 was the last manned lunar mission. No human since has been far enough from Earth to photograph an image such as The Blue Marble. The Blue Marble was not the first clear image taken of a face of the Earth. NASA archivist Mike Gentry has speculated that The Blue Marble is among the most widely distributed images in human history, there has also been a childrens television program called Big Blue Marble. The data also included a similarly manually assembled cloud-cover and night-lights image sets, a subsequent release was made in 2005, named Blue Marble Next Generation. A number of viewers for these data have also been released. On 25 January 2012, NASA released an image of the western hemisphere of Earth entitled Blue Marble 2012. The picture logged over 3.1 million views on the Flickr image hosting website within the first week of release
3.
Apollo 17
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Apollo 17 was the final mission of NASAs Apollo program, the enterprise that landed the first humans on the Moon. Apollo 17 was the first night launch of a U. S. human spaceflight and it was a J-type mission which included three days on the lunar surface, extended scientific capability, and the third Lunar Roving Vehicle. Evans took scientific measurements and photographs from orbit using a Scientific Instruments Module mounted in the Service Module, Cernan, Evans and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after a 12-day mission. Apollo 17 is the most recent manned Moon landing and was the last time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit, the mission broke several records, the longest moon landing, longest total extravehicular activities, largest lunar sample, and longest time in lunar orbit. Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and former X-15 pilot Joe Engle were assigned to the crew of Apollo 14. Engle flew sixteen X-15 flights, three of which exceeded the 50 mi border of space, following the rotation pattern that a backup crew would fly as the prime crew three missions later, Cernan, Evans, and Engle would have flown Apollo 17. Harrison Schmitt served on the crew of Apollo 15 and. However, Apollo 18 was cancelled in September 1970, following this decision, the scientific community pressured NASA to assign a geologist to an Apollo landing, as opposed to a pilot trained in geology. In light of pressure, Harrison Schmitt, a professional geologist, was assigned the Lunar Module Pilot position on Apollo 17. Scientist-astronaut Curt Michel believed that it was his own decision to resign, after it became clear that he would not be given a flight assignment, that mobilized this action. Subsequent to the decision to assign Schmitt to Apollo 17, there remained the question of which crew would become prime crew of the mission. NASA Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton ultimately assigned the crew of Apollo 14, along with Schmitt. The Apollo 15 prime crew received the backup assignment since this was to be the last lunar mission, however, when the Apollo 15 postage stamp incident became public in early 1972 the crew was reprimanded by NASA and the United States Air Force. Robert F. Overmyer Robert A. Parker C, three white stars above the red bars represent the three crewmen of the mission. The background includes the Moon, the planet Saturn and a galaxy or nebula, the wing of the eagle partially overlays the Moon, suggesting mans established presence there. The gaze of Apollo and the direction of the eagles motion embody mans intention to further destinations in space. The patch includes, along with the colors of the U. S. flag, the image of Apollo in the mission insignia is a rendering of the Apollo Belvedere sculpture. The insignia was designed by Robert McCall, with input from the crew, since Apollo 17 was to be the final lunar landing of the Apollo program, high-priority landing sites that had not been visited previously were given consideration for potential exploration
4.
Geopolitics
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Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography on international politics and international relations. Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain and these include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated. Geopolitics focuses on power in relation to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history, academically, geopolitics analyses history and social science with reference to geography in relation to politics. Outside of academia, a variety of groups offer a geopolitical prognosis, including non-profit groups, critical geopolitics deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers during and after the age of imperialism. Mahan distinguished a key region of the world in the Eurasian context, namely, in this zone independent countries still survived – Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, China, and Japan. Mahan regarded those countries, located between Britain and Russia, as if between Scylla and Charybdis, of the two monsters – Britain and Russia – it was the later that Mahan considered more threatening to the fate of Central Asia. Mahan was impressed by Russias transcontinental size and strategically favorable position for southward expansion, therefore, he found it necessary for the Anglo-Saxon sea power to resist Russia. The Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich is considered to be the first having coined the acceptance in English as early as 1902, lea believed that while Japan moved against Far East and Russia against India, the Germans would strike at England, the center of the British Empire. He thought the Anglo-Saxons faced certain disaster from their militant opponents, sir Halford Mackinders Heartland Theory initially received little attention outside geography, but some thinkers would claim that it subsequently influenced the foreign policies of world powers. His formulation of the Heartland Theory was set out in his article entitled The Geographical Pivot of History, Mackinders doctrine of geopolitics involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire, the Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which wouldnt need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. Mackinder posited that the centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy one of them in turn. Mackinder called this region the Heartland and it essentially comprised Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa. The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many natural resources. Mackinders notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said, Who rules Central, who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the World, nicholas J. Spykman is both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and Halford Mackinder
5.
Robinson projection
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The Robinson projection is a map projection of a world map which shows the entire world at once. It was specifically created in an attempt to find a compromise to the problem of readily showing the whole globe as a flat image. The Robinson projection was devised by Arthur H. Robinson in 1963 in response to an appeal from the Rand McNally company, Robinson published details of the projections construction in 1974. The National Geographic Society began using the Robinson projection for general world maps in 1988. In 1998 NGS abandoned the Robinson projection for that use in favor of the Winkel tripel projection, the Robinson projection is neither equal-area nor conformal, abandoning both for a compromise. The creator felt this produced an overall view than could be achieved by adhering to either. The meridians curve gently, avoiding extremes, but thereby stretch the poles into long lines instead of leaving them as points, hence, distortion close to the poles is severe, but quickly declines to moderate levels moving away from them. The straight parallels imply severe angular distortion at the high latitudes toward the edges of the map. However, at the time it was developed, the projection effectively met Rand McNallys goal to produce appealing depictions of the entire world, I decided to go about it backwards. … I started with a kind of artistic approach, I visualized the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, then I figured out the mathematical formula to produce that effect. Most mapmakers start with the mathematics, the projection is defined by the table, The table is indexed by latitude at 5 degree intervals, intermediate values are calculated using interpolation. Robinson did not specify any particular method, but it is reported that he used Aitken interpolation himself. The PLEN column is the length of the parallel of latitude, meridians of longitude are equally spaced on each parallel of latitude. List of map projections Winkel Tripel — projection currently used by the National Geographic, a New Map Projection, Its Development and Characteristics. In, National Geographic, December 1988, pp. 911–913, flattening The Earth—2000 Years of Map Projections, The University of Chicago Press. Table of examples and properties of all projections, from radicalcartography. net An interactive Java Applet to study the metric deformations of the Robinson Projection. Numerical evaluation of the Robinson projection, from Cartography and Geographic Information Science, April,2004 by Cengizhan Ipbuker
6.
Life
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Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved. The definition of life is controversial, the current definition is that organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. However, many other definitions have been proposed, and there are some borderline cases. Modern definitions are more complex, with input from a diversity of scientific disciplines, biophysicists have proposed many definitions based on chemical systems, there are also some living systems theories, such as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that the Earth itself is alive. Another theory is that life is the property of systems, and yet another is elaborated in complex systems biology. Abiogenesis describes the process of life arising from non-living matter. Properties common to all organisms include the need for certain chemical elements to sustain biochemical functions. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28 billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, Earths current life may have descended from an RNA world, although RNA-based life may not have been the first. The mechanism by which began on Earth is unknown, though many hypotheses have been formulated and are often based on the Miller–Urey experiment. The earliest known forms are microfossils of bacteria. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes believed to be present in the last universal ancestor of all living organisms. Since its primordial beginnings, life on Earth has changed its environment on a time scale. To survive in most ecosystems, life must often adapt to a range of conditions. Some microorganisms, called extremophiles, thrive in physically or geochemically extreme environments that are detrimental to most other life on Earth, Aristotle was the first person to classify organisms. Later, Carl Linnaeus introduced his system of nomenclature for the classification of species. Eventually new groups and categories of life were discovered, such as cells and microorganisms, cells are sometimes considered the smallest units and building blocks of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many such as proteins
7.
Civilization
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Historically, a civilization was a so-called advanced culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure, Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings. The earlier neolithic technology and lifestyle was established first in the Middle East, and later in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China, similar pre-civilized neolithic revolutions also began independently from 7,000 BCE in such places as northwestern South America and Mesoamerica. These were among the six civilizations worldwide that arose independently, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE, with civilizations developing from 6,500 years ago. Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitist Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various cradles from around 3300 BCE. Chalcolithic civilizations, as defined above, also developed in Pre-Columbian Americas and, despite an early start in Egypt, Axum and Kush, the English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé, from Latin civilis, related to civis and civitas. The fundamental treatise is Norbert Eliass The Civilizing Process, which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period, in The Philosophy of Civilization, Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions, one purely material and the other material and ethical. Adjectives like civility developed in the mid-16th century, the abstract noun civilization, meaning civilized condition, came in the 1760s, again from French. The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French revolution, civilization was used in the singular, never in the plural and this is still the case in French. The use of civilizations as a noun was in occasional use in the 19th century. Only in this sense does it become possible to speak of a medieval civilization. Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement, one historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and this sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by conscious, rational, deliberative acts, but a kind of pre-rational folk spirit. Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to vices of social life such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism, Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Andrew Nikiforuk argues that civilizations relied on shackled human muscle and it took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities and considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations. All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation
8.
Universe
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The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the size of the entire Universe is unknown. The earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. In developing the law of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton built upon Copernicuss work as well as observations by Tycho Brahe. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy and it is assumed that galaxies are distributed uniformly and the same in all directions, meaning that the Universe has neither an edge nor a center. Discoveries in the early 20th century have suggested that the Universe had a beginning, the majority of mass in the Universe appears to exist in an unknown form called dark matter. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the Universe, under this theory, space and time emerged together 13. 799±0.021 billion years ago with a fixed amount of energy and matter that has become less dense as the Universe has expanded. After the initial expansion, the Universe cooled, allowing the first subatomic particles to form, giant clouds later merged through gravity to form galaxies, stars, and everything else seen today. Some physicists have suggested various multiverse hypotheses, in which the Universe might be one among many universes that likewise exist, the Universe can be defined as everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. According to our current understanding, the Universe consists of spacetime, forms of energy, the Universe encompasses all of life, all of history, and some philosophers and scientists suggest that it even encompasses ideas such as mathematics and logic. The word universe derives from the Old French word univers, which in turn derives from the Latin word universum, the Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of the same senses as the modern English word is used. Another synonym was ὁ κόσμος ho kósmos, synonyms are also found in Latin authors and survive in modern languages, e. g. the German words Das All, Weltall, and Natur for Universe. The same synonyms are found in English, such as everything, the cosmos, the world, the prevailing model for the evolution of the Universe is the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang model states that the earliest state of the Universe was extremely hot and dense, the model is based on general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The Big Bang model accounts for such as the correlation of distance and redshift of galaxies, the ratio of the number of hydrogen to helium atoms. The initial hot, dense state is called the Planck epoch, after the Planck epoch and inflation came the quark, hadron, and lepton epochs. Together, these epochs encompassed less than 10 seconds of time following the Big Bang, the observed abundance of the elements can be explained by combining the overall expansion of space with nuclear and atomic physics. As the Universe expands, the density of electromagnetic radiation decreases more quickly than does that of matter because the energy of a photon decreases with its wavelength
9.
Ontology
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Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Although ontology as an enterprise is highly hypothetical, it also has practical application in information science and technology. Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all refer to existent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, between these poles of realism and nominalism, stand a variety of other positions. An ontology may give an account of which refer to entities, which do not, why. Principal questions of ontology include, What can be said to exist, into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things. What are the meanings of being, what are the various modes of being of entities. Various philosophers have provided different answers to these questions, one common approach involves dividing the extant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Such an understanding of ontological categories, however, is merely taxonomic, what does it mean for a being to be. Is existence a genus or general class that is divided up by specific differences. Which entities, if any, are fundamental, how do the properties of an object relate to the object itself. What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental attributes of a given object, how many levels of existence or ontological levels are there. Can one give an account of what it means to say that an object exists. Can one give an account of what it means to say that an entity exists. What constitutes the identity of an object, when does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing. Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectivity and subjectivity, i. e. is the subject/object split of modern philosophy inevitable. e. Being, that which is, which is the present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, i. e. to be, I am, and -λογία, -logia, i. e. logical discourse. The first occurrence in English of ontology as recorded by the OED came in a work by Gideon Harvey, Archelogia philosophica nova, or, New principles of Philosophy
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