Earth

The planet Earth is a vibrant terran world in the Sol system with a diverse biosphere recovering from a near-miss ecological collapse. Being the only tectonically active planet in the Sol system and one of two worlds in the system with liquid surface water, Earth is the archetype of the terran planetary class. Earth is home to an indigenous sophont species: humans. It is roughly the center of known space and the United Nations Aerospace Commission's primary center of operations, making it cartographically critical to the interstellar network. It is one of a minority of worlds divided into nations, hence its primary governing body being the United Nations of Earth -the ancestor to most of humankind's modern administrative structure.
Earth’s rich cultural and biological history makes it a tourist destination renowned across known space, despite the strict biosecurity procedures. For many humans, it is even a spiritual experience, making it their life’s goal to retire on Earth and connect with the home of their ancestors. Centuries of ecological engineering and conservation have managed to avert the effects of early human industry, restoring the world to a natural balance and even reviving many species driven extinct by human error. Today, one can watch herds of mammoth roam the Siberian tundra, visit dodo birds on Mauritius, or experience the return of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 30th century Earth is a good place to be, and humanity is collectively proud of their home: the cradle of the diaspora.

Geography

Location

Numbered rhombi: Lagrange points
LEO: Low Earth Orbit
GEO: Geosynchronous Earth Orbit
HEO: High Earth Orbit
CLS: Cislunar Space

Earth-Luna System

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The Earth-Luna planetary system is one of the busiest gravity wells in the Sol system, with thousands of stations of varying sizes -plus tens of millions of autonomous satellites- whirling around the competing gravitational fields of the two planetary bodies.

Earth is the third planet out from its sun, Sol. It has a single natural satellite, a selenic spherical planetoid called Luna, as well as millions of artificial satellites. One of its most notable orbital features is El Torre de Babel (or just Babel), a ground-to-orbit cable lift suspended from an asteroid in geostationary orbit. Its terrestrial contact point is an anchored floating platform in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Manta, Ecuador: Puerta del Cielo.

Surface

by Doug Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Allan Marshall

Click this image to view an interactive 3D map of Earth.

by NASA (Earth Observatory)

The planet Earth has six major continents: Africa, Eurasia, Australia, North and South America, and Antarctica. These sit in a global ocean, which has been split into several oceans in traditional naming conventions: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern Oceans. Earth has an impressive diversity of biomes, created by the intersection of climate variation and biodiversity. From tundra to tropical rainforest, scrubland to coral reef, Earth's environments are its most valuable treasure.

For more information, visit the Wikipedia page on Earth.

Ecosystem

by Doug Marshall

by Allan Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Doug Marshall

by Allan Marshall

by Doug Marshall

Earth is the abiogenetic origin point and native home of the Terragenia group of organisms, a highly successful and widespread type of life that includes the starfaring humans. Terragenid life, like all other known life, is based upon carbon chemistry; and like most life, utilizes the oxidation loop as its primary metabolic cycle. The dominant complex photoautotrophs on the planet utilize both forms of chlorophyll, lending its flora a vivid range of greens.
Terragenia arose an estimated 4.5 billion metric years ago in warm geothermal pools on the young Earth, and spent most of that time as solely unicellular life. Multicellular life appears to have evolved just one billion years ago, and about half a billion years ago underwent an explosion of biodiversity. Roughly 350 million years ago, an impact event is hypothesized to have launched a small number of living extremophile microorganisms into space that managed to survive the long voyage to Jupiter's moon Europa. This collection of organisms evolved into the modern Europan subsurface ocean biota, and caused great surprise upon its initial discovery in the 2030s. Since humankind has begun inhabiting other planets, the terragenid tree of life has been carried to more than a dozen new planets, most prominently Mars.

Resources & Industry

For a significant portion of human history, Earthly civilization's primary source of energy was combustion of geologically-condensed hydrocarbons: so-called "fossil fuels." However, this mode of power quickly destabilized the global climate, resulting in a mass shift into a combination of renewable-environmental and nuclear energy in the early 21st century. During the environmental reclamation of the next several centuries, almost all industry was moved offworld; either into low orbit or to Luna. The vast, incredibly destructive farming practices of the 20th century have been replaced by responsible biomass management planning. Earthlings eat what they can grow, catch, or more commonly print, leaving most of the surface of the planet to become wild again - at least, wild with human oversight.
In the modern day, the dominant percentage of the work that remains Earthbound deals with biology: genetic archiving and export, ecological management, or, yes, even ecotourism. Due to Earth's status as one of a very small number of worlds in the universe with a truly indigenous and well-established biosphere, the planet has strict self-imposed restrictions on mass exportation. However, this rare and extremely high level of biodiversity allows Earth's primary natural resource to be genetic information, exported either via pure data, tissue samples, or genetic material isolate samples.

by UNAC (SEO-44) / Doug Marshall

Earth from orbit, with city lights visible across central Eurasia and northern Africa.

Archive Data

HAZARDS

ORBITAL CHARACTERISTICS

System

Sol

Parent body

Sol

Perihelion

0.98 AU

Aphelion

1.01 AU

Semi-major axis

1.0 AU

Eccentricity

0.017

Inclination

7.16°

Orbital period

365.26 days

Rotation period

23.93 hours

Solar day

24 hours

Obliquity

23.44°

Notable satellites

• Luna (selena)

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Class

temperate mesobaric terra (TR)

Radius

6371 km

Surface area

5.1e+8 km²

Volume

1.08e+12 km³

Mass

5.97e+24 kg

Gravity

9.8 m/s²

Atmospheric pressure

1 atm

Atmosphere composition

• 78% nitrogen
• 21% oxygen
• 0.9% argon
• 0.1% other gases

Average temperature

14.9°C

BIOSPHERE INFORMATION

Life

Organic multicellular

Biome(s)

marine / terrestrial

Origin

Abiogenesis

Genesis group

Terragenia

Native sophonts

• humans (sapient)
• orcas (sapient)
• great apes (protosapient)
• crows (protosapient)
• elephants (protosapient)

ERPA Biosecurity Rating

HIGH

HABITATION INFORMATION

Tech level

15

Population

8.2 billion

Demonyms

Terran, Earthling

Administrated by

United Nations of Earth

Member of

Earth-Moon Union

Jurisdiction of

United Sol System

Related Historical Events

• Nov. 20 1998 CE - Nov. 24 2052 CE[p][small]Initial construction completed Aug. 6 2010[/small][/p]
  International Space Station

Inhabitants

Pioneer Plaque by Linda Salzman Sagan

Earth is inhabited by two confirmed sophont species, only one of which has achieved technological civilization. Humans (depicted above) thought themselves the sole sapient inhabitants of Earth for most of their history. However, in the mid-22nd century they were finally able to communicate intelligibly with the other sophonts of their planet: orca whales. Since then, biologists have come to the conclusion that multiple different genera of organisms on Earth exhibit the evolutionary trend toward sapience, including corvids, pachyderms, and octopi.

Biosecurity

Earthlings have spent the last several centuries repairing the biosphere they accidentally broke, and take ecological defense and maintenance incredibly seriously. Earth may be dependent on manufactured goods from its orbital space and moon, but there is a mandatory 48-hour quarantine and screening process in place for all crewed vessels attempting a landing, and mandatory sterilization for uncrewed spacecraft. While supplementary artificial immune systems are standard across the whole UNH and spaceflight itself acts as a long-term quarantine, the people of Earth are not taking chances on their planetary biosphere.

Terragenia

Chemistry

Basis

Carbon

Key elements

• Hydrogen
• Oxygen
• Nitrogen
• Phosphorous
• Sulfur

Solvent

Water

Metabolics

Energy input pathway

CO₂ + H₂O + hv → CH₂O + O₂

Primary cycle

Oxidation loop (adenosine phosphate binding)

Secondary cycles

• Nicotinamide reversible hydrogen ionization
• Acetyl enzyme oxidation

Genetics

Structure

Double/single helix (alternation)

Primary nucleotides

• Adenine
• Cytosine
• Guanine
• Thymine
• Uracil

Strand

Ribonucleic acid (oxy/deoxy forms)

Structure

Base unit is a phospholipid bilayer cell with internal components in water-based fluid suspension. Genetic material is contained within the cell either in open suspension or within a specialized chamber.

Reality Check

All current scientific knowledge maintains that Earth is the only planet in the known universe which definitively harbors life, and furthermore the only place in the universe where sapience can be found.