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.
The global digital divide describes global disparities, primarily between developed and developing countries, in regards to access to computing and information resources such as the Internet and the opportunities derived from such access.
The Internet is expanding very quickly, and not all countries—especially developing countries—can keep up with the constant changes.[example needed] The term "digital divide" does not necessarily mean that someone does not have technology; it could mean that there is simply a difference in technology. These differences can refer to, for example, high-quality computers, fast Internet, technical assistance, or telephone services. (Full article...)
Jacob Bryant's Orphic Egg (1774)The cosmic egg, world egg or mundane egg is a mythologicalmotif found in the cosmogonies of many cultures that is present in Proto-Indo-European culture and other cultures and civilizations. Typically, the world egg is a beginning of some sort, and the universe or some primordial being comes into existence by "hatching" from the egg, sometimes lain on the primordial waters of the Earth. Typically, the upper half of the egg, or its outer shell, becomes the heaven (firmament) and the lower half, or the inner yolk, becomes the Earth. The motif likely stems from simple elements of an egg, including its ability to offer nourishment and give rise to new life, as is reflected by the Latin proverbomne vivum ex ovo ('all life comes from an egg').
A map of nations which have Lèse-majesté laws as of September 2022 Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice one's opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment. "Speech" is not limited to public speaking and is generally taken to include other forms of expression. The right is preserved in the United NationsUniversal Declaration of Human Rights and is granted formal recognition by the laws of most nations. Nonetheless, the degree to which the right is upheld in practice varies greatly from one nation to another. In many nations, particularly those with authoritarian forms of government, overt government censorship is enforced. Censorship has also been claimed to occur in other forms and there are different approaches to issues such as hate speech, obscenity, and defamation laws.
The following list is partially composed of the respective countries' government claims and does not fully reflect the de facto situation, however many sections of the page do contain information about the validity of the government's claims alongside said claims. (Full article...)
The world religions paradigm was developed in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, where it was pioneered by phenomenological scholars of religion such as Ninian Smart. It was designed to broaden the study of religion away from its heavy focus on Christianity by taking into account other large religious traditions around the world. The paradigm is often used by lecturers instructing undergraduate students in the study of religion and is also the framework used by school teachers in the United Kingdom and other countries. The paradigm's emphasis on viewing these religious movements as distinct and mutually exclusive entities has also had a wider impact on the categorisation of religion—for instance in censuses—in both Western countries and elsewhere. (Full article...)
The following are images from various world-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Image 2Earth'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 streching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Image 16Geologic 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 17Artist'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 19Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 22Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
Image 29Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
Image 30The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church
Image 31Artist'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 37An 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 52A High Desert storm, sweeps across the Mojave (from Earth)
Image 53An 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 54First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Image 55A 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 56Earth's land use for human agriculture (from Earth)
Image 57A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Image 58Exaggerated 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 59Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
Image 60Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
Image 67Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 77Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
Image 78Change 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 79A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Image 80Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Image 86The 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 87Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7billion years from now (from Earth)
Image 91Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Lagos emerged as a home to the Awori subgroup of the Yoruba of West Africa islands, which are contained in the present day Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos Island, Eti-Osa, Amuwo-Odofin and Apapa. The islands are separated by creeks, fringing the southwest mouth of Lagos Lagoon, while being protected from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier islands and long sand spits such as Bar Beach, which stretch up to 100km (62mi) east and west of the mouth. Due to rapid urbanisation, the city expanded to the west of the lagoon to include areas in the present day Lagos Mainland, Ajeromi-Ifelodun, and Surulere. This led to the classification of Lagos into two main areas: the Island, which was the original city of Lagos, and the Mainland, which it has since expanded into. This city area was governed directly by the Federal Government through the Lagos City Council, until the creation of Lagos State in 1967, which led to the splitting of Lagos city into the present-day seven Local Government Areas (LGAs), and an addition of other towns (which now make up 13 LGAs) from the then Western Region to form the state. (Full article...)
Within each classification of reserve there may be a variation of IUCN categories Australia is a signatory to the Convention of Biological Diversity and as such has obligations to report the status of its National Reserve System.IUCN provides on its website a prescription for activities consistent with the categorisation system. Changes made to the Nature Conservation Act 2002 in 2014 permit timber harvesting. These changes made in addition to the already established right to access minerals means that many of the IUCN categorisations assigned to individual reserves in Tasmania are no longer fit for purpose. In addition many reserves have had their reserve status downgraded from a class excluding timber harvesting and mineral extraction to ones where these activities are now permitted. This mis-application of the IUCN protected area categories needs to be remedied or the reserves protected land class under the Nature Conservation Act 2002 should be adjusted to reflect its currently assigned IUCN category. (Full article...)
Image 2
Map of Georgia The protected areas of Georgia cover almost one million acres (4,000km2) of the state. These areas are managed by different federal and state level authorities and receive varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. On the Federal level, Georgia contains 1 Biosphere Reserve, 15 National Park Service Managed Sites, 1 National Forest and 8 Wildlife Refuges. Georgia is home to 63 state parks, 48 of which are state parks and 15 that are National Historic Sites, and many state wildlife preserves, under the supervision of the Georgia Department of Parks and Recreation, a division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. (Full article...)
The total area of Georgia's protected terrestrial territories is 6,501km2 (2,510sqmi), which amounts to approximately 9.29% of the country's territory. In addition 153km2 (59sqmi) of marine area protected, or 0.67% of the country's territorial waters. There are a total of 89 protected areas, including 14 Strict Nature Reserves, 12 National Parks, 20 Managed Nature Reserves, 40 Natural Monuments, 2 Ramsar sites and 1 Protected Landscape. Strict nature reserves comprise 140,672 ha, while national parks cover 276,724 ha. The total number of visitors to Georgia's protected areas was just under 1.2 million in 2019. (Full article...)
Image 4
The protected areas of Nepal cover mainly forested land and are located at various altitudes in the Terai, in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the mountains, thus encompassing a multitude of landscapes and preserving a vast biodiversity in the Palearctic and Indomalayan realms. Nepal covers 147,181km2 (56,827sqmi) in the central part of the Himalayas. Altitudes range from 67m (220ft) in the south-eastern Terai to 8,848m (29,029ft) at Mount Everest within a short horizontal span. This extreme altitudinal gradient has resulted in 11bio-climatic zones ranging from lower tropical below 500m (1,600ft) to nival above 5,000m (16,000ft) in the High Himalayas, encompassing nine terrestrial ecoregions with 36vegetation types.
Additionally, nine Ramsar sites were declared between 1988 and 2008. Two wildlife reserves were declared as national parks in 2017. (Full article...)
Image 5
Victoria is the smallest mainland state in Australia. As of 2022[update] it contained 5,081 separate protected areas with a total land area of 4,012,888ha (9,916,060 acres) (17.64% of the state's area).
The parks are managed by Parks Victoria, a state governmentagency. There are also many smaller state areas which are subject to commercial activity such as logging.
National parks of Victoria State parks of Victoria Marine national parks of Victoria Marine and coastal parks of Victoria Marine sanctuaries of Victoria Other parks of Victoria
Protected areas of Canada consist of approximately 12.1 percent of the nation's landmass and freshwater are considered conservation areas, including 11.4 percent designated as protected areas. Approximately 13.8 percent of Canada's territorial waters are conserved, including 8.9 percent designated as protected areas. Terrestrial areas conserved have increased by 65 percent in the 21st century, while marine areas conserved have increased by more than 3,800 percent.
Conservation and protected areas have different mandates depending on the organization which manages them, with some areas having a greater focus on ecological integrity, historical preservation, public usage, scientific research, or a combination of usages. Some areas such as the Polar Bear Pass, are co-managed and overseen by government and local indigenous agencies. (Full article...)
Image 9
This is a list of the nationally designated protected areas of China. There are many forms of protected areas in China. Based on their relative importance, each type of protected area can be further graded into two to three levels (national, provincial and prefectural/county level). Nevertheless, the highest rank for "pocket nature preserve" (social and mass-based), "no-hunting area", "no-fishing area", "no-logging area", "wild medicinal material resources conservation area", "crop germplasm resources conservation area", "forest tree germplasm resources conservation area" or "source water protection area" is practically restricted to provincial level. The local government at county level is also responsible for the delimitation and declaration of "basic farmland protection area" and "basic grassland".
Take note that many protected areas in China have multiple official designations, and the statutory boundaries of these multi-designated PAs may be identical or may vary one from the other. For instance, the boundaries of Huangshan NSHA coincide with those of the Huangshan NGP, whereas Fujian province's Wuyi Mountains NNR, NSHA and NFP are adjacent to each other. In Heilongjiang, 27,642.14 hectares out of 115,340.27 hectares of Huzhong NFP are intersected with the experiment zone of Huzhong NNR. (Full article...)
Image 10
Cadw is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government which manages historical buildings and ancient monuments in Wales. (Full article...)
Rano Kau, Parque National Rapa Nui, Easter Island The protected areas of Chile are areas that have natural beauty or significant historical value protected by the government of Chile. These protected areas cover over 140,000km2 (54,054sqmi), which is 19% of the territory of Chile. The National System of Protected Wild Areas (SNASPE by its Spanish acronym) is regulated by law #18,362 passed in 1984, and administered by the National Forest Corporation (CONAF).
The protected areas of Michigan come in an array of different types and levels of protection. Michigan has five units of the National Park Service system. There are 14 federal wilderness areas; the majority of these are also tribal-designated wildernesses. It has one of the largest state forest systems as well having four national forests. The state maintains a large state park system and there are also regional parks, and county, township and city parks. Still other parks on land and in the Great Lakes are maintained by other governmental bodies. Private protected areas also exist in the state, mainly lands owned by land conservancies. (Full article...)
Kentucky's system of 44 state parks has been referred to as "the nation's finest" and experiences more repeat business annually than those of any other U.S. state. The state's diverse geography provides a variety of environments to experience. From mountain lakes to expansive caves to forests teeming with wildlife, park-goers have their choice of attractions, and they are all within a day's drive of each other.
Unless otherwise specified, data in the following lists are taken from Kentucky State Parks by Bill Bailey. (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
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Portal:World, and is written by contributors.
Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
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 streching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Ajloun Castle, Jordan
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (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)
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.
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)
Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
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)
Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
The pale orange dot, an artist's impression of the early Earth which might have appeared orange through its hazy methane rich prebiotic second atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere at this stage was somewhat comparable to today's atmosphere of Titan. (from History of Earth)
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale (from History of Earth)
Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church
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)
View of Earth from the Moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (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)
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)
Empires of the world in 1898
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)
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
A pillar at Göbekli Tepe
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
A High Desert storm, sweeps across the Mojave (from Earth)
First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
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)
Earth's land use for human agriculture (from Earth)
A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (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)
Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
A Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (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)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a NASA astronaut, observing Earth from the Cupola module at the International Space Station on 11 September 2010 (from Earth)
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (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)
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
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)
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
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)
An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
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Mollweide projection of the world
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
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
Time zones of the world
A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
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