Omnipresent Soils

Abstract

Knowledge of our Homo sapiens existence is restricted to a tiny patch of both space and time in the cosmic infinity. In spite of the presence of such infinite dimensions and our feelings of being isolated, lost, and completely out of touch with all other vast, unknown reaches within and outside the universe, it will help us to put parts of our known world into mutual relationships. Our soils form a very thin peel on the surface of our planet Earth. The total surface area of Earth is 510 million km² or 5.1 × 10⁸ km². Real soils have been born on terrestrial landscapes that extend across 143,330,000 km² or rounded to 1.43 × 10⁸ km² when we omit the area of Antarctica covered by ice during the last 2 million years. The surface area of all planets in our solar system, rounded to 1.22 × 10¹¹ km², is roughly 3 orders of magnitude larger than the area of all our continents and islands, again without Antarctica. Or, in other words, the soil covering our Earth’s solid surface is a thousand times smaller than the surface areas of all planets in our solar system.