You may not be aware, but the Earth is not a sphere. that our speed around the Sun is 67,000 miles per hour? that the majority of the fresh water on Earth is found in Antarctica?

We searched through our archives to narrow down the most amazing and fascinating facts about the planet to just ten.

Earth is the third rock from the Sun

The only planet with a free-oxygen atmosphere, liquid water on its surface, and most importantly, life, is Earth, which is located third from the Sun. Earth has a rocky atmosphere, just like Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

The Earth is a condensed disk.

The world is not an exact circle. If Earth were a perfect sphere, gravity would pull us toward the center while centrifugal force would pull us outward as the planet spins. Although it acts perpendicular to the Earth’s axis and the Earth’s axis is tilted, the centrifugal force at the equator does not exactly oppose gravity. The imbalance is exacerbated at the equator where extra masses of earth and water are pushed into a bulge, or “spare tire,” around our planet.

There is a waistline on the globe.

At 24,901 miles in diameter at the equator, Mother Earth has a big waistline (40,075 kilometers). Bonus information: You would weigh less if you were standing on the equator than if you were at one of the poles.

The World is shifting.

An instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft captured this image of the North Pole in true color on May 5, 2000. The image shows sea ice in white and open water in black.

Although you might seem to be standing still, you’re actually moving quickly. Depending on where you are on the planet, you could be traveling through space at a speed of just over 1,000 miles per hour. The fastest moving people are those who live near the equator, while those who reside at the North or South poles are completely still. (Put a basketball on your finger and spin it.) A point on the ball’s equator at random will travel a greater distance in a single spin than a point close to your finger. The equator’s point is moving faster as a result.)

The Sun revolves around the earth.

Oh, and the Earth is still moving around the Sun at a speed of 107,826 kilometers per hour (or 67,000 mph).

The Earth is an ancient planet.

By dating the planet’s oldest rocks and surface-found meteorites, scientists can determine the age of the Earth (meteorites and Earth formed at the same time, when the solar system was forming). How did they find out? Estimates place the planet’s age at 4.54 billion years.

The earth is a recycling machine.

The ground you are standing on was built using recycled materials. The Earth’s rock cycle involves the transformation of igneous rocks into sedimentary rocks, metamorphic rocks, and back again.

The cycle doesn’t completely circle, but the fundamentals operate as follows: Magma rises from the Earth’s interior and turns into rock (the igneous part). Tectonic forces lift the rock to the surface, where erosion whittles away at it. These tiny particles are deposited, buried, and compressed into sedimentary rocks like sandstone by pressure from above. Deeper burial exposes sedimentary rocks to pressure and heat, which “cook” them into metamorphic rocks.

Sedimentary rocks can, of course, undergo further erosion, and metamorphic rocks can undergo further uplift. But if metamorphic rocks get stuck in a subduction zone, where one piece of crust pushes under another, they might turn back into magma.

Our moon trembles

The Earth’s moon appears to be inactive and dormant. However, there are still occasional tremors due to moonquakes, or “earthquakes” on the moon. On the moon, earthquakes are less frequent and weaker than they are on Earth.

According to USGS scientists, tidal stresses brought on by the shifting distance between the Earth and the moon frequently cause moonquakes. Between the lunar surface and its base, at great depths, moonquakes are much more likely to occur.

The largest earthquake occurred in Alaska.

As of March 2016, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake that occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on Good Friday, March 28, 1964, was the largest earthquake to ever hit the United States. The largest earthquake ever recorded, with a magnitude of 9.5, occurred in Chile on May 22, 1960, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Libya is the hottest spot.

El Azizia, Libya, is the hottest place on Earth, according to NASA Earth Observatory, where weather station data shows the temperature reached 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 degrees Celsius) on September 13, 1922. Outside of the network of weather stations, there were probably hotter locations.