Why isn’t it round and flat like a pancake or square like a block? Why does it spin? And why does it whirl around the sun?
Most scientists think the answers lie in the earth’s beginning. They think it began billions of years ago with a gigantic, spinning cloud of dust and gas in space.
The earth was one of the balls that formed from the dust and gas. As the earth’s gravity pulled in more and more dust and gas, everything squeezed together, tighter and tighter. The ball grew hotter and hotter. It became so hot that bits of dust, mostly rock and metals, melted together. The earth glowed!
The outside of the earth didn’t stay hot. The melted rock cooled. As it cooled, it hardened. It became a ball of hard rock and metal, as it is today. But the inside of the earth never cooled. The centre of the earth is fiery hot. Heat is always flowing from it, and parts of it are still melting.
Bit by bit, we are finding new clues about the earth’s beginning. There are lots of stories and beliefs of how the earth began. But nobody really knows exactly what happened.
Picture Credit : Google
