EARTH

go back to terra firma...

Terra Firma. It's located at just the right distance from the Sun so as to spawn and hold an onion-skin thin atmosphere. Earth is neither too small nor too large in diameter as to either crush that atmosphere or allow it to blow away like a veil, which it would do were the Earth just a little bit smaller. Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. For a little half of its lifetime it has had organic life flourishing in its biosphere. Despite what you may think or have read, Earth may be unique--not only in the Solar System but in the Universe at large--in giving birth to organic life. For only the past 300 years--i.e., a mere sliver of her lifetime to date--Earth has had intelligent beings crawling over its surface. These creatures possess the capability of all but destroying her. In other words, science has been around only a miniscule fragment of her life--like the latest several micro-seconds out of 4.5 billion years. And humanoid life itself also may be only about 4 million years old. So, in other words, she is a "middle aged" lady-- say of 45 years--who in the latest seconds of her life has had some unusual characters roaming around her. She must hope, WE must hope, that she will not become an unwilling suicide, that her intelligent beings will know how to keep her alive and well. When seen from outer space, Earth looks like a limpid, bluish-green ornament whose stunning allure makes spacemen and -women go speechless--those lucky people, like my friend, Astronaut Ed Mitchell, who have viewed her at 300 miles-plus altitude.

Terra Firma--Earth--serves here as a locus of specially-topical terrestrialities...and a few trivialities as well...