Can anyone explain why the planet Earth is totally unique among all planets and other space bodies.?

Question

From the many pictures I've seen of the planets and space bodies, Earth seemed to be the only plane with large bodies of water, endless jungles and teaming with complex life. The others all look pretty much alike - barren rocks and endless lifeless desert. The closest plants to Earth (Venus and Mars) should at least have some environment like Earth.

Answer 1

Well, for one thing, earth-like planets are very hard to see. Of all the planets that we know about, most of them are gigantic gas planets because these are the easiest to find with telescopes. We only know of a few planets that are rocky and roughly the same size as Earth; there may be many more that we haven't discovered yet. As for why Earth is the only planet with abundant liquid water and living things, I don't think anybody knows that.

Answer 2

With the other planets in our solar system, there are lots of reasons why life (as we have it on Earth) can't survive. Some like Mercury and Venus are too close to the sun without atmospheres that protect the planet. I read somewhere that Mars was too cold on the inside (missing the molten core or the core that was there has already cooled). The other planets are way too far away from the sun to have a stable heat source. As for planets in other star systems --- we have only just gotten a few infrared and microwave pictures of the large (bigger then Jupiter) planets and none of the pictures are close enough to "see" what they are like. So it is quite possible that the Earth is not unique at all, we just haven't been out of our backyard yet :-)

Answer 3

Nobody yet knows how life started on Earth, but there is no doubt that once it did, it altered the chemistry of the atmosphere. There was no oxygen in the atmosphere to start with. It took hundreds of millions of years of the exhalations of microscopic plant life, using the sun's energy in photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into enough oxygen in order for oxygen utilising animals to exist.

Scientists believe this could be done "manually" on other planets, particularly Mars, where Carbon Dioxide is a chief constituent of the atmosphere. Called "terraforming", it would establish plants, which over time would generate enough oxygen in the atmosphere to enable humans and animals to exist without personal life-support systems.

A greened Mars would become a totally different world. Not only do animals and plants alter the atmosphere, but also the soil itself. Of course, it would require water, and that is why NASA is making so much effort to locate water in the rocks or subsoil.

Once you get a water cycle going and the carbon cycle that life creates, Mars would become another Earth. Released water would make clouds and real weather. Atmospheric moisture would create a greenhouse effect and the temperature would become amenable, with much less range between night and day as there is at present.

Unfortunately, this will not happen in our lifetimes. It might just happen, if the whole world got behind it and we all stopped trying to blow each other up.

Answer 4

I doubt Earth is unique on a universal scale, or even a galactic one, but in our solar system, it most definatly is unique.

Our planet exists in a "habitation zone". A particular distance from the sun which allows water to exist in a liquid form. It's also massive enough to hold on to it's atmosphere (and water vapor).

It's true that Mars can indeed reach temperatures as high as 80F at the equator, and probably does have large quantities of water ice under the surface, but Mars isn't as massive as the Earth and lost most of it's atmosphere long ago because of it, leaving it exposed to high levels of solar radiation and uninsulated.

Venus was very similar to Earth but took a different evolutionary path early on because of it's closer proximity to the sun. Venus and Earth have the same amounts of C02 but in Earth the Co2 remainds trapped in rocks for the most part, while on Venus it was allowed to enter into the atmosphere, causing a runaway greenhouse effect and making the planet completey inhospitable to life as we know it (in complex form anyway).

So in short, Earth just happened to have the right mass, an abundant amount of water (perhaps delivered by comets) and occupied the sweet spot of the solar system.

Answer 5

You ask a very interesting question and you're on the right path to answering it yourself. However one quick comment I have is that we only have pictures of planets within our solar system, so it would only make sense that they all look radically different, as they are all occupy very distinct and nearly constant relative positions to the sun. (That is, there could be infinite other planets, some of them nearly identical to Earth - which is likely, although debated - but we just haven't seen them. We can't; there are limitations on the resolving power of telescopes that exclude the possiblity of seeing them. The presence of planets around other stars is complex. The best way is to look at the warble induced on the star's orbit).
The characteristic that gives Earth its unique appearance is also one of the major reasons that life exists and proliferates to such a great extent on Earth. That characteristic is a nearly constant range of temperatures that allows for water to exist on varying parts of the planet in all three states: solid (ice), liquid (oceans, etc), gas (atmosphere; humidity).
This allows for the spectacular white clouds and large bodies of blue water that can be seen from satellite photos, and of course the polar ice caps.
I would say that second of importance to distance from the sun is size and density of our planet, which, together with distance from sun roughly determines the composition of the atmosphere, and thus certain color and spectroscopic qualities that would be associated with perceiving our planet from another.
Lastly, I encourage you to go to NASA's website and look at the pictures taken by the rovers. You'll find that Mars looks like Arizona.
I hope this answers your question.

Answer 6

good thinking then the third have been given to be gravity - as a results of fact that we don't be conscious of precisely why the earth itself is a magnet. And if we use atoms as an analogy to our international, then we knew that approximately 2000 kilometres under the earth's crust, lies the molten area (which itself is approximately 3000 kilometres thick) that surrounds the solid centre -- perhaps those shifting molten creates the magnetic fields. And in case you will discover out something of the planets interior the asteroid belt no longer have been given shifting molten, then you definately acquire a good case that we are the only one left. or perhaps different planets nonetheless have been given a shifting molten middle yet too deep interior (no longer sufficient strikes) - perhaps like Mars, then a self producing environment isn't conceivable. yet then Saturn have been given a belt all on that is own!!! Dig deep in it to help your findings, usually a clean look at issues help. the former day's technology info ought to in basic terms be todays mistake.

Answer 7

Our planet is really unique becouse:
1) about 79% is water & 21% is land
2) we have atmosphere that allow the safe rays of the sun to enter & keep the harm rays out
3) the distance of our planet from the sun is suitable, it keeps the earth in a normal climate (not very hot & not very cold)
4) we have air that contains the most two important gases for the life of the human body (oxygen & nitrogen)

there r so many another reasons for ur question, i mentioned the most important ones

i hope u got ur point from my explanation

Answer 8

We are not unique, 1 billion years ago the earth was no different to the other planets. We evolved to the planet we are. In another billion years we may be no different to mars, our position to the sun is also optimal for the life brought in by comets in the form of chemicals to evolve into life. Planets alter over billions of years we see only a blink in the universal timescale.

Answer 9

Remember, we've only seen our own planetary system in any kind of detail...so far. It's frustrating, but we have to be patient while the new technologies come on line that will help us see farther AND in greater detail.

There's no reason, given the slight data in hand, to believe that the Earth is entirely "unique". Granted, of the one-hundred and sixty-something other worlds detected so far, they're all in the size and compositional range of Jupiter...but that's owing entirely to the limitations of the technology being used. It's suspected that there are small, rocky, companions to many of these gas-balls (based upon the host star's progradational perturbations), but the HST wasn't designed to look for them. The HST can see FAR, and it can see radiant light; but it's absolute crap at seeing tiny, tiny things that can only dimly reflect a star's light.

We'll just have to wait...the technology IS coming.

Answer 10

And, the 'biomass' seems to be eradicating everything on the small parts of the planet that are elevated above the waters, plus, there is that spreading stain, which is in the shallow coastal areas!!!

Imagine visitors, observing from the nearest Gas Giant Planet's orbit...

"Shouldn't we do something?" Observer Zorb opined " What we observed on the outer planets, a few billion years ago, when the sun was much hotter and larger, is now occurring on this planet!"

"You know 'that' would be a violation of our mission orders!" Captain Drib said, as he adjusted the deep space viewer to observe a white vessel, apparently some kind of floating hotel, careen at a 45 degree turn in it's course, causing it to tip over at a 30 degree angle, almost capsizing. It reminded him of the little Dribs, playing roughly in the scum pond on his home world.

"Hmmm, appears fun and refreshing!" Captain Drib thought , almost emoting the thoughts out loud, "They MUST be having some kind of fun down there! Too bad it was such a small planet, and such a small body of water, or I would be sorely tempted to descend, and cool off in the dark waters. Too bad about the small size, really, though." But, he kept his thoughts to himself, with the final wisp of a mental figment, "Not quite enough room for two Xifian Space Lords, especially as we tend to swell considerably, upon contact with water."

"Well, back to our survey of the sector, Observer Zorb!" Captain Drib said, in too loud a voice, "Perhaps we will find a planet with enough water for us both to play in, Observer Zorb!" "Besides the problem of the small amount of water in the basins, there seems to be small bioluminescent bacteria in large masses, upon each coast line, that we would have to eradicate, first!"