Earth

Earth is our living planet that is located in a larger solar system. ( "Biogenesis", "") It has a molten core and measures 12,756 kilometers in diameter. ( "Firewalker", "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", "")
==History==
===Creation===
13.8 billion years ago, the universe was formed in a big bang expanding ever outward, birthing cosmos from matter and gas. Earth and its solar system were also formed in this supreme act of violence. ( "Biogenesis") At first, Earth was just a ball of gas spinning in space, one of similar billions. ( "Darwin's Eye")
Life first appeared in the planet's sea almost four billion years ago. The first form of life was single-celled. In an explosion of life spanning millions of years, nature's first multicellular organisms began to multiply but then suddenly stopped about 440 million years ago. Nearly every species on Earth was decimated by a great mass extinction that left the planet's vast oceans decimated and empty.
Plants slowly began to evolve, followed by insects, but they were also wiped out, this time in Earth's second great mass extinction.
The cycle repeated many times. Reptiles emerged from the sea, independent of their former habitat, only to become suddenly extinct. ( "Biogenesis") Dinosaurs, having ruled as lords of the Earth for millions of years, also became suddenly extinct when a giant rock hit the Yucatán peninsula. ( "Darwin's Eye") Their decimation, as well as those of the first birds, fish and flowering plants, were part of Earth's fourth and fifth great extinctions.
About 100,000 years ago, modern humans, scientifically known as Homo sapiens, appeared. They catalogued the natural world as it unfolded around them using cave paintings. They, as well as every other human who would follow, were all descended from the first single cell of life on Earth. Although humans have amassed an enormous amount of information and knowledge, they are uncertain as to what or who created that original cell and if there is a plan, purpose or reason for their existence. ( "Biogenesis")
====Creation Theories and Beliefs====
Early Greek, Roman and Egyptian humans believed in powerful gods who lived in the heavens, controlling the earthly fate of man himself. They believed that the pantheon of warring deities was the cause and reason for the human condition and for the past and future. These early humans constructed great monuments on Earth in honor of the gods, but they were provided with little certain or great answers. Humans eventually replaced these gods with new religions and new, monolothic and benevolent gods. ( "Patient X")
For example, number four of the Ten Commandments states that God made Heaven and Earth. ( "Anasazi") A verse in the Bible's Book of Genesis reads, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." ( "Biogenesis")
Some people, including , subscribed to the belief that science could provide the answers. ( "") A scientifically plausible fringe theory called "Panspermia" was that life on Earth had originated elsewhere in the universe. The idea was that Mars or other planets had been habitable long before Earth was and that cosmic collisions on these planets had blasted microbes into Earth's solar system, some of which had landed and flourished on Earth. ( "Biogenesis") Many respected scientists believed that life had originated from a meteor or rock from Mars that had crashed to Earth. In May 2002, Scully herself revealed that she agreed with this theory. She also believed that the same meteor had brought an alien virus which had thrived on Earth prehistorically, eventually infecting early humans and transforming them into life-forms themselves. According to Scully, these aliens died in the planet's last ice age and the virus lay dormant underground until it resurfaced in 1947. ( "The Truth") In 2000, the told that God was actually an alien intelligence far greater than humans. ( "Requiem")
Category:Planets