Earth: What a WEIRD Planet - w/ Kathryn Williams from National Geographic! - The Cosmic Companion 30 August 2022

Is Earth one of the weirdest planets we have ever seen? Heck, yes! And we talk about what makes our planet so weird with Kathryn Williams from Nat Geo Kids!

This week on The Cosmic Companion, we’ll look at Earth: What a Weird Planet, exploring some of the odd facts which make our world such an odd place. Later in the show, we’ll be talking with Kathryn Williams, editor of Weird but True! World 2023 from National Geographic.

The most striking feature of the Blue Marble of planets is… well… it’s blue. Very blue. So bluuueeee!

Water covers roughly three-quarters of the surface of our planet. And, although we now suspect several other worlds of the Solar System house vast oceans of water, none of these is found so readily across the surface.

And have you noticed the Moon? Our planetary companion is a whopping one-quarter of the size of Earth. That ratio is only outdone by Pluto and Charon, but Pluto is no longer considered a full-fledged planet, so we win. Go Earth!

Listen to the podcast here or watch the video version of the episode on YouTube!

Next week on The Cosmic Companion, we look in on Jupiter: King of the Planets! as we welcome astrophysicist Stephen Kane from UC Riverside back to the show! We will talk about his work explaining why the largest planet in our solar system doesn’t have a magnificent set of rings!

Make sure to join us beginning 6 September. See you then!

Clear skies!

James

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