The Blue Marble in the context of "Harrison Schmitt"

A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of the Earth. While this is true of any map, these distortions reach extremes in a world map. Many techniques have been developed to present world maps that address diverse technical and aesthetic goals.

Charting a world map requires global knowledge of the Earth, its oceans, and its continents. From prehistory through the Middle Ages, creating an accurate world map would have been impossible because less than half of Earth's coastlines and only a small fraction of its continental interiors were known to any culture. With exploration that began during the European Renaissance, knowledge of the Earth's surface accumulated rapidly, such that most of the world's coastlines had been mapped, at least roughly, by the mid-1700s and the continental interiors by the twentieth century.

The age of Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years. This age represents the final stages of Earth's accretion and planetary differentiation. Age estimates are based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteoritic material—consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial material and lunar samples—and astrophysical accretion models consistent with observations of planet formation in protoplanetary disks.

Following the development of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old. The oldest such minerals analyzed to date—small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia—are at least 4.404 billion years old. Calcium–aluminium-rich inclusions—the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the Solar System—are 4.5673 ± 0.00016 billion years old giving a lower limit for the age of the Solar System.

Ecosystem diversity deals with the variations in ecosystems within a geographical location and its overall impact on human existence and the environment.

Ecosystem diversity addresses the combined characteristics of biotic properties which are living organisms (biodiversity) and abiotic properties such as nonliving things like water or soil (geodiversity). It is a variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the whole planet. Ecological diversity includes the variation in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Ecological diversity can also take into account the variation in the complexity of a biological community, including the number of different niches, the number of and other ecological processes. An example of ecological diversity on a global scale would be the variation in ecosystems, such as deserts, forests, grasslands, wetlands and oceans. Ecological diversity is the largest scale of biodiversity, and within each ecosystem, there is a great deal of both species and genetic diversity.

The Gaia hypothesis (/ˈɡaɪ.ə/), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.

The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Following the suggestion by his neighbour, novelist William Golding, Lovelock named the hypothesis after Gaia, the primordial deity who was sometimes personified as the Earth in Greek mythology. In 2006, the Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock the Wollaston Medal in part for his work on the Gaia hypothesis.

South-up map orientation is the orientation of a map with south up, at the top of the map, amounting to a 180-degree rotation of the map from the standard convention of north-up. Maps in this orientation are sometimes called upside-down maps or reversed maps.

Space art, also known as astronomical art, is a genre of art that visually depicts the universe through various artistic styles. It may also refer to artworks sent into space.

The development of space art was closely linked to advancements in telescope and imaging technology, which enabled more precise observations of the night sky. Some space artists work directly with scientists to explore new ways to expand the arts, humanities, and cultural expressions relative to space. Space art may communicate ideas about space, often including an artistic interpretation of cosmological phenomena and scientific discoveries.