Friday, April 30, 2021

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PLANET EARTH

Every day on earth the world’s plants grow 300 million tonnes, the same as an oak tree 3.5 km high

And more astonishing facts about how the Earth changes in 24 hours. Emma Segal

In a single day on Earth… 73 million cubic metres of lava have erupted from volcanoes, forming new land. Enough to fill more than 29,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Earthquakes release enough energy to equal a 650,000-tonne blast of TNT. The world’s tectonic plates have pulled far enough apart from each other to create 7,400 square metres of new crust — the surface area of 28 tennis courts. A vast cloud of dust from the Sahara desert has flown halfway around the world. 77,000 tonnes of it has fallen in the Amazon, fertilizing the rich rainforests. Glaciers have gouged almost eight million tonnes of sediment from the earth. 10 billion tonnes of phytoplankton, microscopic aquatic plants that provide every second breath we take, created in the world’s oceans would form a mountain 3.5 kilometres wide and 3 kilometres tall. More than ten gigatonnes of zooplankton have migrated from the ocean’s depths to consume 9 billion tonnes of phytoplankton — 20 times the weight of all the people on earth. The world’s plants have grown an additional 300 million tonnes, equivalent to a single oak tree over 3.5 kilometres high. A forest of these trees would absorb 147 million tonnes of carbon and produce 392 million tonnes of oxygen. 371,500 people have been born, almost half as many people have died, and over 130,000 people have moved out of poverty. We have produced more than 200,000 cars, built 2,989 kilometres of roads and grown 2.85 million tonnes of corn. The earth’s magnetic North Pole has moved 150 metres from where it was the day before. 60 tonnes of space dust has hit our planet.

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