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 "the 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.
The Men's Rugby World Cup is a rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams, the winners of which are recognised as the world champions of the sport.
The tournament is administered by World Rugby, the sport's international governing body. The winners are awarded the Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis who, according to a popular legend, invented rugby by picking up the ball during a football game and running with it. (Full article...)
The WTO's primary functions are to provide a framework for negotiating trade agreements and to resolve trade disputes among its members. Its agreements, which are negotiated and signed by the majority of the world's trading nations and ratified in their legislatures, cover trade in goods, services, and intellectual property. The organization operates on the principle of non-discrimination—enshrined in the most-favoured-nation and national treatment provisions—but allows for exceptions for environmental protection, national security, and other objectives. (Full article...)
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Plates in the crust of Earth
Earth's crust is its thick outer shell of rock, comprising less than one percent of the planet's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a solidified division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. The lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates whose motion allows heat to escape the interior of Earth into space.
The crust lies on top of the mantle, a configuration that is stable because the upper mantle is made of peridotite and is therefore significantly denser than the crust. The boundary between the crust and mantle is conventionally placed at the Mohorovičić discontinuity, a boundary defined by a contrast in seismic velocity. (Full article...)
Protestors clash with Hong Kong police in the Wan Chai waterfront area during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 2005. Since its creation in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has worked to maintain and develop international trade. As one of the largest international economic organizations (alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank), it has strong influence and control over trading rules and agreements, and thus has the ability to affect a country's economy immensely. The WTO policies aim to balance tariffs and other forms of economic protection with a trade liberalization policy, and to "ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible". Indeed, the WTO claims that its actions "cut living costs and raise standards, stimulate economic growth and development, help countries develop, [and] give the weak a stronger voice." Statistically speaking, global trade has consistently grown between one and six percent per annum over the past decade, and US$38.8 billion were allocated to Aid for Trade in 2016.
Yet several criticisms of the WTO have arisen over time from a range of fields, including economists such as Dani Rodrik and Ha Joon Chang, and anthropologists such as Marc Edelman, who have argued that the institution "only serves the interests of multinational corporations, undermines local development, penalizes poor countries, [and] is increasing inequality", and have argued that some agreements about agriculture and pharmaceutical goods have led to restricted access to food and healthcare, thus causing large numbers of deaths. Several factors are alleged to contribute to these conditions, including but not limited to: the most favoured nation rule (MFN), national treatment policies, and failure to regard the infant industry argument. Critics argue that the policies that support these principles fail to protect developing nations, and in some cases take advantage of them. For example, UNCTAD estimates that market distortions cost developing countries $700 billion annually in lost export revenue. (Full article...)
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The United States and China are the two countries widely held to be superpowers. Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to exert influence and project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political, and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers. While a great power state is capable of exerting its influence globally, superpowers are states so influential that no significant action can be taken by the global community without first considering the positions of the superpowers on the issue.
Percentage of people suffering from mental disorders in different geographical areas in 2019
Global mental health is the international perspective on different aspects of mental health. It is 'the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide'. There is a growing body of criticism of the global mental health movement, and has been widely criticised as a neo-colonial or "missionary" project and as primarily a front for pharmaceutical companies seeking new clients for psychiatric drugs.
Image 3Artist'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 4Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
Image 7Pangaea 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 8Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 13Artist'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 14The first airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Image 23A conception of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years in the future (from Earth)
Image 24The 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 28Exaggerated 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 33A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Image 34Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Image 3513th-century French historiated initial with the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry)
Image 36A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Image 50Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
Image 51A 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 53An 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 54An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Image 57Portrait of Alfraganus in the Compilatio astronomica, 1493. Islamic astronomers began just before the 9th century to collect and translate Indian, Persian and Greek astronomical texts, adding their own astronomy and enabling later, particularly European astronomy to build on. Symbolic for the post-classical period, a period of an increasing trans-regional literary culture, particularly in the sciences, spreading and building on methods of science. (from Human history)
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 66Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Image 67Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Image 71Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 74Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green 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 aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Image 84Geologic 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 86Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
... that the Cure's Shows of a Lost World has grossed $37.5 million and become their highest-grossing tour to date, despite the band's refusal to use Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing?
... that while the 2024 WDF World Darts Championship final featured a 70-year-old, the 2025 final featured a 15-year-old?
Various lists of the Wonders of the World have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, in order to catalogue the world's most spectacular natural features and human-built structures.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the oldest known list of this type, documenting the most iconic and remarkable human-made creations of classical antiquity; the canonical list was established in the 1572 Octo Mundi Miracula, based on classical sources which varied widely. The classical sources only include works located around the Mediterranean rim and in the ancient Near East. The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it represented perfection and plenty, and because it reflected the number of planets known in ancient times (five) plus the Sun and Moon. (Full article...)
As of present, there are around 400 protected areas in Pakistan that are recognized by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The total protected land area represents 13% of Pakistan's landmass as of 2020, The Government of Pakistan plans to increase it to at least 15% by 2023. As a signatory of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Pakistan is committed to expanding its protected areas to encompass 17% of its total territory by the year 2030. This ambitious goal aims to ensure the long-term conservation of nature, safeguard vital ecosystem services, and preserve the cultural values associated with these protected areas. (Full article...)
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The sun over the Lake Niassa Reserve Protected areas in Mozambique are known as conservation areas, and are currently grouped into national parks, national reserves, forest reserves, wildlife utilisation areas (coutadas), community conservation areas, and private game farms (fazendas de bravio). There are also a number of areas that have been declared as protected areas under a variety of different legislation, which for reasons of simplicity are here grouped together as "other protected areas." Under the Conservation Law of 2014 (Law 16/2014 of June 20), protected areas will need to be reclassified into a much more flexible series of new categories which are closer to the international system used by the IUCN. International initiatives such as transfrontier parks are grouped at the end of the page. (Full article...)
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A National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) is an environmentally protected area in Laos. There are altogether 21 different NBCAs in Laos, protecting 29,775 square kilometers. Another 10 NBCAs have been proposed, the territory of many of them being treated by authorities as though they were already officially protected. (Full article...)
The supreme responsibility for conservation lies with the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, which has delegated the management to the Governor of Svalbard and the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management. The foundation for conservation was established in the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, and has been further specified in the Svalbard Environmental Act of 2001. The first round of protection took force on 1 July 1973, when most of the current protected areas came into effect. This included the two large nature reserves and three of the national parks. Moffen Nature Reserve was established in 1983, followed by four national parks, three nature reserves and one geotope protection area between 2002 and 2005. (Full article...)
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Large-scale protected areas of the Czech Republic: national parks (brown) and protected landscape areas (green) There are several types of protected areas of the Czech Republic. The main form of landscape protection is delimitation of special protected areas. All the types of protected areas are determined by law. (Full article...)
Image 5Only 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
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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)
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
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)
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 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)
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Vitruvian Man, c. 1490 by Leonardo da Vinci, epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
Artist'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 round microbialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (from History of Earth)
The first airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
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)
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
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)
Cross-section through a liposome (from History of 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)
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
Pillar erected by Ashoka, a Mauryan Emperor in India
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
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 reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
13th-century French historiated initial with the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry)
A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Cuneiform inscription, eastern Turkey
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
The Colosseum in Rome (from Human history)
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
A depiction of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Carving of Persian and Median soldiers, Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 5th century BCE
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (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)
European migrations by mostly Germanic peoples, 2nd–6th centuries (from Human history)
Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
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)
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Pale orange dot, an impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
Portrait of Alfraganus in the Compilatio astronomica, 1493. Islamic astronomers began just before the 9th century to collect and translate Indian, Persian and Greek astronomical texts, adding their own astronomy and enabling later, particularly European astronomy to build on. Symbolic for the post-classical period, a period of an increasing trans-regional literary culture, particularly in the sciences, spreading and building on methods of science. (from Human history)
Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from 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 schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Battle during the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
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)
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 (from Human history)
Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
A pillar at Neolithic Göbekli Tepe
Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green 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 aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
One of the eleven Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela constructed during the Zagwe dynasty in Ethiopia (from Human history)
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack, a result of globalizing maritime trade
Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale. Ma means "million years ago", Ga means "billion years ago". (from History of Earth)
Successive dispersals of Homo erectus (yellow), Homo neanderthalensis (ochre) during Out of Africa I and Homo sapiens (red, Out of Africa II), with the numbers of years since they appeared before present. (from Human history)
Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
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.
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
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)
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1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Mollweide projection of the world
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
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
Time zones of the world
The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
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