The Blue Marble, a photograph of the planet Earth made on 7 December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.
In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.
Participants base their criticisms on a number of related ideas. What is shared is that participants oppose large, multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets. Specifically, corporations are accused of seeking to maximize profit at the expense of work safety conditions and standards, labour hiring and compensation standards, environmental conservation principles, and the integrity of national legislative authority, independence and sovereignty. Some commentators have variously characterized changes in the global economy as "turbo-capitalism" (Edward Luttwak), "market fundamentalism" (George Soros), "casino capitalism" (Susan Strange), and as "McWorld" (Benjamin Barber). (Full article...)
The primary objective of UNCTAD is to formulate policies relating to all aspects of development, including trade, aid, transport, finance and technology. It was created in response to concerns among developing countries that existing international institutions like GATT (now replaced by the World Trade Organization), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank were not properly organized to handle the particular problems of developing countries; UNCTAD would provide a forum where developing nations could discuss and address problems relating to their economic development. (Full article...)
World map of countries and territories by HDI scores in increments of 0.050 (based on 2022 data, published in 2024)
≥ 0.950
0.900–0.950
0.850–0.899
0.800–0.849
0.750–0.799
0.700–0.749
0.650–0.699
0.600–0.649
0.550–0.599
0.500–0.549
0.450–0.499
0.400–0.449
≤ 0.399
Data unavailable
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq and was further used to measure a country's development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development Report Office.
The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). While the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or the maximum level of HDI) that could be achieved if there was no inequality." (Full article...)
Image 5
A world map on the Winkel tripel projection, a low-error map projection adopted by the National Geographic Society for reference maps A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of the Earth. While this is true of any map, these distortions reach extremes in a world map. Many techniques have been developed to present world maps that address diverse technical and aesthetic goals.
Charting a world map requires global knowledge of the Earth, its oceans, and its continents. From prehistory through the Middle Ages, creating an accurate world map would have been impossible because less than half of Earth's coastlines and only a small fraction of its continental interiors were known to any culture. With exploration that began during the European Renaissance, knowledge of the Earth's surface accumulated rapidly, such that most of the world's coastlines had been mapped, at least roughly, by the mid-1700s and the continental interiors by the twentieth century. (Full article...)
The salinity of water bodies varies widely, being lower near the surface and the mouths of large rivers and higher in the depths of the ocean; however, the relative proportions of dissolved salts vary little across the oceans. The most abundant solid dissolved in seawater is sodium chloride. The water also contains salts of magnesium, calcium, potassium, and mercury, amongst many other elements, some in minute concentrations. (Full article...)
Image 7
The reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States (1776). The Latin phrase novus ordo seclorum, appearing on the reverse side of the Great Seal since 1782 and on the back of the U.S. one-dollar bill since 1935, translates to "New Order of the Ages", and alludes to the beginning of an era where the United States of America is an independent nation-state; conspiracy theorists claim this is an allusion to the "New World Order".
The New World Order (NWO) is a term used in several conspiracy theories which hypothesize a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually achieve world domination and rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history's progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been alleged to be part of a cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.
Before the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily the part of fundamentalist Christianity concerned with the eschatological end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Academics who study conspiracy theories and religious extremism, such as Michael Barkun and Chip Berlet, observed that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about a New World Order not only had been embraced by many seekers of stigmatized knowledge but also had seeped into popular culture, thereby fueling a surge of interest and participation in survivalism and paramilitarism as many people actively prepare for apocalyptic and millenarian scenarios. These political scientists warn that mass hysteria over New World Order conspiracy theories could eventually have devastating effects on American political life, ranging from escalating lone-wolf terrorism to the rise to power of authoritarian ultranationalistdemagogues. (Full article...)
Image 3A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Image 4Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Image 8Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Image 18Earth's atmosphere as it appears from space, as bands of different colours at the horizon. From the bottom, afterglow illuminates the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the yellow line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible), continuing with green and red bands of airglow or aurorae over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Image 23Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
Image 24An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Image 34Exaggerated illustration of Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun, marking that the orbital extreme points (apoapsis and periapsis) are not the same as the four seasonal extreme points, the equinox and solstice (from Earth)
Image 42A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
Image 43The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Image 46Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
Image 47An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
Image 48Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
Image 49Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Image 53Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years from now (from Earth)
Image 54Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
Image 60Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 64Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
Image 65An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
Image 67Artist's impression of Earth during the later Archean, the largely cooled planetary crust and water-rich barren surface, marked by volcanoes and continents, features already roundmicrobialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (from History of Earth)
Image 78A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Image 79Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
Image 80Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Image 81Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
Image 82Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
Image 83Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 84A High Desert storm, sweeps across the Mojave (from Earth)
Image 85Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
Image 88First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Image 89A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Shenzhen roughly follows the administrative boundaries of Bao'an County, which was established in imperial times. The southern portion of Bao'an County became part of British Hong Kong after the Opium Wars, while the village of Shenzhen was on the border. Shenzhen railway station was the last stop on the mainland Chinese section of the Kowloon–Canton Railway, and Shenzhen's economy grew and it became a city by 1979. (Full article...)
... that at a maximum standard length of roughly 2 cm (0.8 in), dwarf pufferfish are some of the smallest pufferfish in the world?
... that Zeliha Ağrıs started performing taekwondo at age ten and became a world champion when she was 19?
... that Heba Saadia, the first Palestinian referee at a World Cup, only took up the profession when she noticed there were no women among a group of referees she saw training?
The New 7 Wonders of the World was a campaign started in 2001 to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. The popularity poll via free Web-based voting and small amounts of telephone voting was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber and organized by the New 7 Wonders Foundation (N7W) based in Zurich, Switzerland, with winners announced on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon, at Estádio da Luz. The poll was considered unscientific partly because it was possible for people to cast multiple votes. According to John Zogby, founder and current President/CEO of the Utica, New York–based polling organization Zogby International, New 7 Wonders Foundation drove "the largest poll on record".
The program drew a wide range of official reactions. Some countries touted their finalist and tried to get more votes cast for it, while others downplayed or criticized the contest. After supporting the New 7 Wonders Foundation at the beginning of the campaign by providing advice on nominee selection, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), bound by its bylaws to record and give equal status to all World Heritage Sites, distanced itself from the undertaking in 2001 and again in 2007. (Full article...)
Grand Canyon of Yellowstone The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. , the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km2 (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world. The U.S. also had a total of 871 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,240,000 sq mi (3,200,000 km2), or 26 percent of the total marine area of the United States. (Full article...)
Image 2
A National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) is an environmentally protected area in Laos. There are all together 21 different NBCAs in Laos, protecting 29,775 square kilometers. Another 10 NBCAs have been proposed, many of them being treated by authorities as though they were already officially protected. (Full article...)
Strict nature reserve — Area of unmodified natural features with representative ecosystems set aside for the preservation of its biodiversity and for scientific research and monitoring.
Special nature reserve — Area of unmodified or slightly modified natural features of great importance due to uniqueness and rarity which includes the habitats of endangered species set aside for the preservation of its unique features, education, limited tourism and for scientific research and monitoring.
National park — Area with large number of diverse ecosystems of national value, with outstanding natural features and/or cultural heritage set aside for the preservation of its natural resources and for educational, scientific and tourist use.
Natural monument — Small unmodified or slightly modified natural feature, object or phenomenon, easily detectable and unique, with unique natural attributes.
Protected habitat — Area which includes habitats of one or more wildlife species.
Landscape of outstanding features — Area of remarkable appearance with important natural and cultural value.
Nature park — Area of well-preserved natural values with preserved natural ecosystems and picturesque landscape set aside for the preservation of biodiversity and for educational, tourist, recreational and scientific use.
The state of Johor in Malaysia is noted for its national parks and forest reserves which preserve virgin rainforests known for its biodiversity and endangered species of animals. Mangrove swamps and coral reefs are also protected within these parks. (Full article...)
Image 7
Protected areas of Slovenia include one national park (Slovene: narodni park), three regional parks (regijski park), several natural parks (krajinski park), and hundreds of natural monuments (naravni spomenik) and monuments of designed nature (spomenik oblikovane narave). They cover about 12.5% of the Slovenian territory. Under the Wild Birds Directive, 26 sites totalling roughly 25% of the nation's land are "Special Protected Areas"; the Natura 2000 proposal would increase the totals to 260 sites and 32% of national territory. (Full article...)
The Protected areas of Kyrgyzstan are regulated by the law on specially protected natural areas of 2 May 2011, last modified on 2 June 2018. In total, they cover 14,761.216 km2 (5,699.337 sq mi) and account for 7.38% of the country's total area (as of 2017). The first protected area in Kyrgyzstan (Issyk-Kul) was established in 1948. According to the Government Decree on Priorities of Conservation of Biological Diversity and the relevant Action Plan for 2014-2024 the target area for the protected areas in Kyrgyzstan is 10 percent of the country’s area by 2024.
The protected areas are subdivided into seven categories: (Full article...)
Image 7Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
Pale orange dot, an artist's impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
"Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found. Lucy was only 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in) tall.
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
A banded iron formation from the 3.15 Ga Moodies Group, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Red layers represent the times when oxygen was available; gray layers were formed in anoxic circumstances. (from History of Earth)
Earth's atmosphere as it appears from space, as bands of different colours at the horizon. From the bottom, afterglow illuminates the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the yellow line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible), continuing with green and red bands of airglow or aurorae over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale (from History of Earth)
World population, 10,000 BCE to 2023 CE, with projection to 2100 CE (from Human history)
The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church
Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
View of Earth from the Moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Ajloun Castle, Jordan
Earth's land use for human agriculture (from Earth)
A composite image of Earth, with its different types of surface discernible: Earth's surface dominating Ocean (blue), Africa with lush (green) to dry (brown) land and Earth's polar ice in the form of Antarctic sea ice (grey) covering the Antarctic or Southern Ocean and the Antarctic ice sheet (white) covering Antarctica. (from Earth)
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
A 580 million year old fossil of Spriggina floundensi, an animal from the Ediacaran period. Such life forms could have been ancestors to the many new forms that originated in the Cambrian Explosion. (from History of Earth)
A pillar at Göbekli Tepe
A Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a NASA astronaut, observing Earth from the Cupola module at the International Space Station on 11 September 2010 (from Earth)
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
A view of Earth with different layers of its atmosphere visible: the troposphere with its clouds casting shadows, a band of stratospheric blue sky at the horizon, and a line of green airglow of the lower thermosphere around an altitude of 100 km, at the edge of space (from Earth)
An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
Lithified stromatolites on the shores of Lake Thetis, Western Australia. Archean stromatolites are the first direct fossil traces of life on Earth. (from History of Earth)
A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
A High Desert storm, sweeps across the Mojave (from Earth)
Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Empires of the world in 1898
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
Mollweide projection of the world
The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Time zones of the world
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