How Rare Is the Earth?

How rare is the Earth? It's pretty darn rare, just the way I like 'em. Warm and crusty on the outside, red and soft on the inside. Yum.

It's extremely rare, but then our entire solar system is very unusual compared to what we've seen so far in our exploration of space. While there are numerous planets which qualify as Earth-like on size, distance from their sun, etc., none has our outsized moon. You could say that Earth itself isn't rare, but the Earth-Moon binary combination certainly is. Our Moon is so huge that, long ago when it was closer to Earth than it is now, its gravity effectively kneaded Earth like bread dough, adding huge amounts of energy and helping to keep Earth's core hot far longer than would be expected for a planet this age. Our huge moon is largely responsible for creating the conditions which have shaped Earth and the development of life on it. Then there's the fact that although the Moon is undeniably made of Earth material, no believable explanation has yet been proposed for how it came into being. Binary systems like ours are not usually in the inner orbit, that's where the gas giants are usually found. In our solar system the gas giants occupy the outer orbits. As we saw when Shumacher-Levy pummeled Jupiter, those outer gas giants act as something of a shield for Earth, with their enormous gravity pulling down some of the travelers through our system that might otherwise impact Earth. There are a LOT of unusual things about our little ball of rock, and the neighborhood we live in.

Our Earth is a rare singularity.

There is only one of these type planets, with people living on it - anywhere.

Now you know that you are truly special.

Kind Regards....

"There is only one of these type planets, with people living on it - anywhere"

And how is it that you know this?