Europe

Europe - moon

Europe, Jupiter's fourth largest moon. Its radius is 1569 km, its mass 4.8 x 10 ²² kg, and its distance to Jupiter 670,900 km. Europe has a uniform red to beige color, and its surface is crisscrossed by countless partially curved curves that appear darker than the surroundings. There is almost no surface relief in Europe; none of the structures are over a few hundred meters high. Europe has remarkably few craters, and the surface must therefore be very young. The density of the moon is approximately 3.0 g/cm ³, which means that it contains a lot of ice consisting of light molecules. This together with the young surface indicates the presence of a frozen ocean or an extremely icy crust up to 50 km thick. Measurements from the Galileo spacecraft have made it probable that there is liquid water beneath Europe's ice-covered exterior. It has made Europe one of the leading candidates to find non-terrestrial life in the Solar System.

Europe - geography

Europe can be seen both as a continent and as the peninsula that ends the Eurasian mainland to the west. One speaks of a continent because Europe has had the significance of a continent, but the delimitation to Asia lacks the natural geographical and geological basis, which is otherwise the basis for the division into continents. The perception of Europe as a continent is old, known in many variants and has left many traces inside and outside Europe.

Boundary, garden and coasts

Normally, the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains or the Maltese Mountains north of this are considered as a border with Asia. Europe's other borders are gardens and alleys, which are easy to see in the landscape and on the map. To the east and south the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Marmara Sea and the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. To the west the Atlantic Ocean and to the north the Arctic Ocean. This demarcation separates waters, rivers and mountain ranges, but crosses important traffic lines and significant distribution patterns. This applies to political, population and infrastructural contexts in Russia and straits and sea areas that connect rather than separate cultural landscapes, such as the Aegean Sea, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

Garden. Europe is in the middle of the country hemisphere, but ¹/₃of the land area are islands and peninsulas. The Rand Sea North Sea continues in the Danish straits and the Baltic Sea, which cuts deep into the country. The Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the connecting waters are surrounded by the European-Asian-African landmass. Numerous larger and smaller bays and fjords increase the division. Straits and marginal seas separate large islands such as the British Isles, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Crete from mainland Europe. In the archipelagos of the Scandinavian Peninsula and along the coasts of the Adriatic and the Ionian and Aegean Seas, there are swarms of larger and smaller islands. The total coastline, which is usually estimated at 40,000-60,000 km, illustrates the strong division. Over large parts of Europe there are only small distances to a coast, and Europe is the lowest of the continents with an average altitude of 300 m. Very large parts of the continent are actually lowlands; thus the Northern European Plain, which stretches in a belt from the English Channel to the Urals, the Hungarian Plain, the Posletten and others.

The oceans around Europe contain important fishing grounds, such as the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. European fishermen are also found to a large extent in fishing grounds far from the coasts of the continent, e.g. at Newfoundland and Greenland.

The raw materials of the seabed are subject to growing exploitation. Oil and gas extraction in the North Sea is a well-known but far from unique example. Fossil energy from the North Sea area has created economic growth in many cities and regions, such as Western Norway, Norway, North Holland and a number of cities on the UK's east coast, but the oil and gas fields also contribute to the North Sea's environmental impact. A table of European countries, capitals, population and area can be found on Countryaah - Countries in Europe.

The coasts. Highlands and mountains end at many European Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of cliffs or steep cliffs. In long coastlines that, like the Dalmatian, follow the mountain range, there are few natural accesses to the hinterland. Where the mountains, as in the southern Peloponnese or on many British coasts, run across the coast, natural harbors provide easy access to the areas behind it. Coastal landscapes that, like the northern coasts of Brittany and Spain, have been sunk in recent times (Ria coasts), are known on funnel-shaped estuaries. Low, exposed coasts are often offset by several French and Portuguese Atlantic coasts, the north- and west-facing Baltic coasts and a number of stretches along the Mediterranean; many of these shores are accompanied by a dune belt. Coastal landscapes with strong tides have their special character, as seen along the southern North Sea and France's Atlantic coast.

World trade highways follow European waters such as the North Sea, Biscay and the Mediterranean, and important seaways radiate from Europe's major port cities. High-turnover ports are part of European metropolitan areas or in their infrastructure, and states' interest in port cities can be high. Current examples are the enclave of Kaliningrad (Königsberg) in former East Prussia, which Russia clings to, and the Bosnians' attempts to secure recognized access to the Adriatic.