Talk:Earth/Archive 5

message: This entry needs a section called "Earth in popular culture", to keep it in line with every other wikipedia entry. Simbachu 20:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree it can consolidate some of the loose refences such as the Hitchhiker reference HighInBC 20:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pop culture section

message: Q. Should I replace this article with the words "mostly harmless" or "harmless", as per The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
A. No. Every other vandalism to this article is just that, and people who do this will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Share and enjoy!
I was thinking about doing this myself, but I had a feeling it would have been done before. Oh wells :-) Bennity 11:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Damn! Karlusss 22:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Heh, I thought out it too, but couldn't bring myself to do it... great minds think alike apparently. 149.161.20.23 15:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: '''A Very Special Note from the Management'''

message: I have archived the talk page as it was getting long, please move any discussion still active back here. HighInBC 20:00, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yet another archive

message: This is a relatively minor point, but the section on "Composition of the Earth" cannot be quite correct.  The percent by mass of the earth that is iron, oxygen, etc. is given; if one adds the percentages of these seven major constituents, one gets 101.1%.  Even if each of the percentages were rounded, that still would not be enough to make the real value <= 100%, and one would in fact expect these to add up to slightly LESS than 100%.  I went to the referenced source, and the percentages that I found there did not agree with the ones on this page.  But I was puzzled as to why someone would have mistranscribed them, and wasn't sure "bulk earth" was the correct category to be looking under.  Perhaps someone can look into this and fix it?
:Thank you for noticing that. I will look into it tommorow if nobody else does and I remember. HighInBC 18:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It could just be a degree of error. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 19:53, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Composition of the Earth

message: Removed newly added Clearing the neighbourhood section which linked to planetologists squabbling (see: Clearing the neighbourhood). The article is long enough already without adding their trivial naming squabbles or whatever. Vsmith 00:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clearing the neighbourhood 

message: Hi, does anyone have any data or know of references regarding how the diameter of the earth has changes over its evolution? That is, has the diameter of the earth increased or decrease since its inception?  I know, according to solar growth rates stored in fossil records, that it's rotation rate is slowing, e.g. at the 2.5 BYA mark the earth rotated once every ten hours, and that at the 4.5 BYA mark it would have been revolving faster than one rotation per hour (Source: Whitrow's What is Time (1972), pg. 63.) Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 12:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And if we're talking about diametric evolution, the planet will have been more markedly oblate in the past due to faster rotation coupled with lower density, so the polar and equatorial diameters are approaching each other (although they will never be equal). Kris 10:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Diameter of earth now vs. 4.5 BYA?

message: Just a thought, in the first paragraph the Moon is said to be 4.533Ga old. Firstly, I would like to know where that figure came from, and secondly how come we seem to know it so accurately? I'm not questioning it – I'm sure whoever wrote it knows more about it than me, I would just like to know. Would it not be more correct to state the ages of Earth and the Moon to the same number of significant figures if possible? Kris 08:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lunar age 

message: In the section surface it writes
*If all of the land on Earth were spread evenly, then water would rise higher than the Statue of Liberty.
Which is obviously false: simple maths shows that the depth would be "average depth of the seas as they are now" x "percentage of land surface in water". Taking the figures from the article, this yields 3,794x0.708=2686.152. Something like this is noted in the footnote:
*The average depth is, in fact, significantly greater than the statue of liberty. Letting the average depth be approximately equal to water volume divided by the Earth's surface area: the total volume of water is about 1.4 × 109 km3; the total area of Earth is about 5.1 × 108 km². So the average depth would be roughly 2.8 km, whereas the statue of liberty is only 0.093 km, including the pedestal.
I find this setup rather confusing - wouldn't it make more sense to leave out the Statue of Liberty altogether, because it is nowhere close to comparable?80.109.92.235 00:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surface 

message: On what basis is "Tellus" to be considered "correct" and "Terra" incorrect?
This seems like yet another case of bringing in a lesser-known bit of knowledge (in this case that "Tellus" is also a name of the Latin earth goddess) and arbitrarily declaring that a particular interpretation based on it is "correct."
"Terra" is Latin for earth, as in soil, but also land in the sense of territory (e.g., the new world, "terra nova") and the earth as a whole (notably, "In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.").  English partly follows this very pattern.  We talk about tilling the earth, or an earthy smell, but also of the earth as a whole.  This sort of metaphoric extension is fundamental in language.  Further, Terra is the earth goddess and by extension the earth itself.  For example, from Bullfinch's Mythology: "A celebrated exploit of Hercules was his victory over Antaeus.  Antaeus, the son of Terra, the Earth, was a mighty giant and wrestler [...]"
"Tellus" appears to be another name for the earth goddess.  Bullfinch has (in the story of Medea and AEson) "To the stars she addressed her incantations, and to the moon; to Hecate, the goddess of the underworld, and to Tellus the goddess of the earth, by whose power plants potent for enchantment are produced."
It's not clear how to pick a "correct" choice between the two. "Terra" and "Tellus" appear to be simple alternations and are almost certainly cognate to begin with.  Either that, or there were actually two earth goddesses, with suspiciously similar names and attributes, in which case on what basis do we decide that one is "correctly" considered as representing the planet as a whole?
Modern usage at least seems to strongly prefer "Terra", so if one is to be considered "correct" it should be "Terra". -Dmh 17:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point, I support removing any uncited material stating something is incorrect. A bold statement like that needs a citation. HighInBC 18:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It appears someone has re-introduced a milder version of this statement, referencing the entry for Terra (mythology).  This in turn flatly states that the disticntion is technically correct Classical Latin.  I did a little digging and — bearing in mind that I'm no expert in Latin — found that Ovid tends to contradict this.  I won't mess with the Earth article until this resolves, but it's not clear to me why it's important to note a technical distinction in Classical Latin here, even assuming it to be accurate.  There's no end of English usage of Terra as earth, and as far as I can tell some Latin usage as well. -Dmh 06:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Good catch, wikipedia does not use itself as a reference, so I have removed the reference in question. I attempted to use the citations from the Terra (mythology) article, but one was a dead link and the other provided next to no information. HighInBC 14:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've taken out the statement in Terra (mythology).  There appears to be a grain of truth, in that the notion has been around for a while (e.g., Aquinas asserts that the Romans held such a distinction), but there doesn't seem to be much evidence that the Romans themselves cared that much, except perhaps in some limited context.  In any case, it seems at best a rather technical point not worth mentioning here.  I'm taking it back out -Dmh 21:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "often incorrectly referred to as Terra" 

message: humans love cars. stop it. think about global warming. lets all protest the stinking oil. ok? walk to work . just walk. forget cars. screw anything that involves mass greenhouse emissions. now if youre just addicted to cars, then screw you. you will get drowned by the oceans. (and wait im not talking nonsense) with more ice caps melting... the oceans will cool and then they will absorb more heat and technically there could be another ice age. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.142.143.42 (talk • contribs) .
not everyone lives within walking distance of work -- Nbound 04:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And this has to do with the article at hand how? -66.57.45.134 23:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  global warming 

message: Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but this animation is incorrect: it does not take into account the Earth's axial tilt. Should it therefore be removed?
Martin.Budden 17:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's incorrect though- it shows the rotation of the Earth on a equinox.WolfKeeper 22:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At equinox the sun is indeed directly above the equator, but the Earth's axis is still inclined to the orbital plane. In terms of the animation this means that one of the poles should be "nearer" the viewer and one of the poles "further away".  Martin.Budden 21:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I chose this camera angle for viewing as much detail as possible. Camera bearing spacecraft could theoretically be anywhere. We cannot call it an impossible view. Thanks for the comment Martin. At this point I am wondering if a Wiki Planetarium project is underway. I have collected all the data and matrix math needed for the project and put it in one place. Most of the data available is of our little corner, so a working Planetarium should be linked to Alpha_Quadrant and certainly to Planetarium. Even an Opengl applet is possible with certain browsers. What will we title the page and where should it be discussed? A picture is worth 1000 words - Working version nearly complete. "Don't bite the newcomers!" Alphaquad 02:18, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry the delayed reply. I agree that the animation, strictly speaking, is not incorrect. However I assumed the "camera" would be in the Earth's orbital plane and I expect the average high school student would make the same assumption. I don't think you would loose any detail if the camera was moved into the Earth's orbital plane and the animation would then also illustrate the Earth's axial tilt - so in fact you would be showing more detail. Martin.Budden 23:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rotating Earth animation 

message: As requested in the priority one to do list since September 4th 2006  regarding implementing suggestions from featured article review for this article I have taken action to implement on October 1st 2006. Only <I>minor action was taken</I> for a few examples of grammar, as well as changing the word simular to similar which appeared to have a meaning closer to its paragraph in context. Please read, discuss, and keep as the consensus of the group here sees fit. I now go to the next priority one to do list. Absolutely no worries at all. Neutralaccounting 05:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fulfilled Request

message: I am from Earth, atleast I will be staying here a while, anybody want me to take some specific pictures while I am here? HighInBC 14:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: Template:Planet Infobox/Earth was placed on TFD by someone who doesn't like the fact that it stands alone by itself.  Please visit the TFD and express your opinion on this issue.  Dragons flight 17:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Earth Infobox 

message: I think it interesting that people have made the effort to write the word for Earth in other languages, but why is there no transliteration of the Sanskrit word? "Words for Earth in other languages include: पृथ्वी pr̥thvī (Sanskrit)".DDD DDD 01:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Words for Earth in other languages 

message: This section needs some lengthening. That, or actually put some relevent information in the link to another article. This section states composition, but doesn't even state if this is composition by mass or by number of atoms. I recall this information used to be on wikipedia, however now it is on neither page. Harley peters 21:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Composition 

message: There should be more info. about which regions prefer "earthing", "earthing system", as compared to "ground", "grounding", "grounded", "grounding system"?
This does seem extremely dependent on dialect, region, neighborhood.
earth_ground;
ground_%28electricity%29;
ground_%28electrical%29;
ground_%28power%29;
ground_and_neutral.
Then there is "earthling".
hopiakuta ; [[    { %c2%a1 %c2%bf  %7e%7e%7e%7e  } ;]] 22:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  region? 

message: I was taking a quick scroll of the article and saw the section Pedosphere and thought it was vandalism so hit history to revert it but couldn't find the diff very quickly - so I clicked on the link for it and turns out there's such thing as a pedosphere lol. I wonder if anyone has incorrectly deleted this before. --WikiSlasher 11:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pedosphere