Talk:Earth/Archive 12

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Water from comets

Currently, the article carries the following statement:

Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice and liquid water delivered by asteroids and the larger proto-planets, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects produced the oceans.

However, based on HDO isotope abundance measurements of Hale-Bopp, it looks like the idea that water was delivered to the Earth by comets is starting to come under question. See this news story.—RJH (talk) 22:41, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the issue is that long-period comets probably didn't supply Earth's water. Main belt comets are now being considered as a possible source. Serendi^podous 07:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Could be, but that is unclear from the news story. I couldn't find the Nature article mentioned.—RJH (talk) 18:02, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Citations needed

I took the liberty of replicating this from a wikiproject discussion:

There are currently five figures in the "Orbital characteristics" part of Earth's infobox that are uncited. This shouldn't be the case on a Featured Article. If anyone could provide citations, that would very helpful. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:36, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Cybercobra; we need cites for those values. The listed value for the semi-major axis is 1.0000001124; the PDF document on JPL's Keplerian elements page uses a value of 1.00000261 for the Earth-Moon barycenter. The eccentricity is also slightly different. If the aphelion/perihelion are computed from those, they may be slightly off.—RJH (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Updated values of a and e based on cite. Anybody object to using computed values for aphelion and perihelion?—RJH (talk) 23:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 142.104.139.242, 20 May 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Turn the word "world" in the first paragraph into an internal link.

142.104.139.242 (talk) 20:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that will help, Earth is known as "the world" not just world. Mikenorton (talk) 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

 Not done: per Mikenorton. If you feel the link is really necessary, you are welcome to create an account. Regards, {{Sonia|talk|simple}} 22:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that a lot of people will be coming here looking for the kind of content in the world article. 142.104.139.242 (talk) 23:30, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I linked it again, see my edit summary. It had been linked for as long as I can remember and then less than a day after it is delinked we get this request. The definition of "world" can be ambiguous, I'm sure a lot of users will wonder what the Wikipedia article about "world" is actually about. LonelyMarble (talk) 02:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for going against consensus on some words

Thanks to those of you who have patiently reverted my edit that went against prior consensus. I do intend to keep un-linking ordinary English words, but I'm glad to see you guys are willing to fix my inevitable mistakes. --Doradus (talk) 16:19, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Doradus. I've done some cleanup of overlinking in the past, but there is undoubtedly more to be done.—RJH (talk) 19:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The Origin of Earth (the article, not the planet)

First, someone mentioned above that the Earth article was "created." I think that it would be more accurate to say that the article evolved. Second, I think that the word "life" in the beginning of the article should be linked to the article on Life. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.9.57.31 (talk) 04:55, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Natural selection doesn't really apply to data, unless Wikipedia has DNA and I just didn't know it. --Evice (talk) 22:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Holistic views

A good article, but IMO misses to present a holistic view: just consider that there is no mention of ecology at all. There seems to be also a human-centric bias towards the end of the article: compare the lenght of the biosphere section vs. human geography + natural resources and land use + Cultural viewpoint --Elekhh (talk) 05:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

See WP:PSCI. --Evice (talk) 22:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, misunderstood the term due to my tendency to associate the word with the pseudoscientific holistic medicine (science isn't my specialty except for technology). But anyway, this is an article written for humans by humans, so yeah, it's going to be human-centric, even if we aren't the only life forms on the planet. --Evice (talk) 22:34, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

SIZZE!

heard is the bigerst planet in the world, is true?

Well, it's the densest planet in the Solar System, and the largest terrestrial planet (which could make it the largest planet in the unlikely event that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune turn out to be sub-brown dwarfs), though not the largest that we know of. Serendi^podous 13:05, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd be worried if it wasn't the biggest planet in the world, considering it is the world. Zazaban (talk) 23:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You should mean biggest planet in the Universe or maybe in smaller poportions the Solar System, but not the World. Jhenderson777 (talk) 23:28, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The Planet

This article should include that material from other planets could be broken up and added to ours instead of attempting to colonize other planets. Living further from the core of the planet would combat its higher gravity. EugeneKantarovich (talk) 01:36, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have a couple of concerns. Firstly, this really belongs in an article such as Geoengineering. Secondly, adding mass to the Earth would increase the gravity, which would be more than enough to compensate for the increase in radius. Mass increases as the cube of the radius (for the same density); gravity decreases as the square of the radius. A better application might be to boost the mass of Mars.—RJH (talk) 15:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

File:MODIS Map.jpg

Hi guys, I've just bringing your attention to this wonderful cloud cover map of Earth, in case you'd like to use it in the article, particularly in the Earth#Weather_and_climate section. NauticaShades 10:42, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Circumference

The article has some very precise numbers for circumference: 40,075.02 km (equatorial), 40,007.86 km (meridional), 40,041.47 km (mean). I have not seen these elsewhere -- anyone know where the numbers are from? -- Radagast3 (talk) 23:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Why are these measurements not given in miles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.14.172 (talk) 04:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Why would anyone use miles? Wikipedia is a global resource, not an American one. Metric measurements are the units of science, even in the USA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.176.188.102 (talk) 16:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The manual of style policy on units in scientific articles is described at Wikipedia:MoS#Which units to use and how to present them.—RJH (talk) 22:08, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The "Life Cycle Of The Sun" image

Wouldn't a more appropriate title text for this image be "Life Cycle Of A Star", or maybe "Life Cycle Of A Sun"? The current title seems awfully geocentric. Sithman VIII !! 21:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have to disagree. That image is the life cycle of a Sun-like star; not a star in general. It only applies to a small set of all stars, and I don't see a need to confuse the issue for the reader. This article is about the Earth, so geocentricity is seems logical.—RJH (talk) 21:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Automatically accepted

I am unclear how the new article "protection" scheme helps in the slightest when repeated edits by vandals like User:Dran0n get automatically accepted.—RJH (talk) 21:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Dran0n is what we call a "sleeper account", created at 03:28, 4 August 2007 for precisely this reason. It became obvious it was a vandalism only account in November 2009, and the account should have been blocked at that time. Unfortunately, that wasn't done. The account recently returned again to vandalize, and by 21:35, 26 June 2010 it had reached the 10 edit, autoconfirmed threshold. Subsequent edits resulted in visible vandalism to this page. Viriditas (talk) 22:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification.—RJH (talk) 22:08, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Was this odd edit acceptance trial ever even mentioned on the watchlist or other place before it started? Maybe it's just me but Wikipedia regulars seem to be growing thinner and this isn't helping. LonelyMarble (talk) 02:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was, and it's been actively discussed for a long time. This is not something that just started out of the blue. You can visit WP:PENDING for more info. Viriditas (talk) 08:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I know something like this has been discussed for awhile, I must have missed the message about the trial starting. Oh well, thanks. LonelyMarble (talk) 12:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

So... I am curious now as to why the history is becoming replete with reverts of anonymous edits. The reverts are being "automatically accepted", but the anonymous edits are just posted without comment. Is this tool even working? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 16:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

It just means that all the not accepted versions were never seen by the general public. −Woodstone (talk) 17:48, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but it is still unclear. Does this mean that what is stated as a "revert" is actually a not-accepted edit?—RJH (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

No, a revert is still a revert, but the edit that was reverted was only ever seen by "reviewers" - casual readers (not logged in, or registered editors who aren't yet autoconfirmed) will not see the edit. They'll see the previous edit instead. TFOWR 20:01, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I guess that means we'll see a lot more clutter in the article history then, which is a bit of a nuisance. Oh well.—RJH (talk) 21:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

adjectives

Seriously, the unmarked adjective for "pertaining to Earth" is terrestrial.

The other adjectives given -- earthly, tellurian, telluric, terran -- cannot be used in normal contexts. Since we must assume the adjectives are listed for people who are not aware of how to use them in the first place, you are doing them a disservice by listing the normal adjective last, after a bunch of eccentric vocabulary. "earthly" is for either ironic or for religious contexts; tellurian and telluric is for alchemy or similar baroque contexts; terran is for science fiction; chthonic is for mythology.

It's nice to have these adjectives in a thesaurus, say at wikt:terrestrial, but they do not belong in the infobox here. --dab (𒁳) 08:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Viriditas (talk) 09:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)