Earth Emoji PNG
🌍 🌎 🌏 🌐
Among the large number of emoji available on various devices and operating systems, there are emotional faces and images of animals or plants. You can also find quite a solid number of laconic symbols used for official and working moments. Besides, in the standard set of Unicode emoji there are also emoticons that are extremely difficult to interpret ambiguously, and they are not used too often. Today we will talk about several such emoji, which we have grouped into the Earth Emoji category.
🌍 The “Europe and Africa on Earth” emoticon was assigned the code U+1F30D, with which it was added to the Places and Travels section of the Unicode 6.0 standard in 2010.
🌎 The “America on the Globe” emoticon was assigned the code U+1F30E, with which it was added to the Places and Travel section of the Unicode 6.0 standard in 2010.
🌏 The “Asia and Australia on the Globe” emoticon was assigned the code U+1F30F, with which it was added to the Places and Travels section of the Unicode 6.0 standard in 2010.
🌐 The “Meridians” emoticon was assigned the code U+1F310, with which it was added to the Places and Travel section of the Unicode 6.0 standard in 2010.
Meaning of the Earth Emoji
In ancient times people believed that the Earth was flat. This notion is found in the mythology of many ancient peoples and can also be traced back to the early stages of Buddhism and Hinduism. The idea of a flat planet was common in the ancient writings of scientists and philosophers at a time when astronomy had not yet developed as a science.
With the development of astronomy and the study of geography, this idea of a flat Earth became irrelevant and was recognized as erroneous. In addition, there is substantial evidence to support the spherical shape of the planet. Thus, officially, we live on a round Earth, which has the shape of a sphere with a diameter of 12,742 km.
Several factors determine the shape of planet Earth. First, the rotation of the Earth’s ball creates a centrifugal force, and it is higher at the equator than at the poles. Because of this difference, the planet is slightly flattened and its diameter across the equator becomes 43 km larger. If it were entirely covered by a vast ocean, it would form a slightly elongated ellipsoid, a shape that more closely matches the actual shape of the Earth.
However, we are used to seeing spherical images of our planet, and the Unicode emoji is no exception. So we have three emoji depicting the globe from different sides. On this 🌍 emoji we can see the outlines of Africa and Europe, here 🌎 we can see the outlines of America, and here 🌏 we can see Asia and Australia.
As for the meridian 🌐 emoticon, it is the most concise and versatile as it is a schematic representation of a globe.
On the surface of the Earth (or on its model – a globe), you can draw imaginary shortest lines between the North and South Poles. These lines are called meridians. A meridian can be drawn through any point on the Earth’s surface. The meridian is called the noon line (from Latin meuidianus – “noon”), because at noon the shadow of objects shows the north-south direction.
Meridians are used to determine geographic longitude. Counting geographic longitude begins with the prime meridian, which is also called the Greenwich meridian. It gets its name because it passes through the Greenwich Observatory in England.
By the way, originally the zero meridian was held in the capital of countries or passed through a significant geographical object. But in 1884 an international agreement was concluded, according to which the Greenwich meridian was considered as the zero meridian. This greatly simplified the location of time zones and the “reading” of geographical maps.
The Use of the Earth Emoji
As far as the use of Earth Emoji is concerned, it’s not as one-sided as it may seem at first glance. Of course, the three detailed 🌍 🌎 🌏 emoticons are most often used literally – when we talk about our planet, continents, geography in general or in the context of traveling. Then an emoticon from this group can often be seen in company with the emoji airplane ✈️ .
As for the globe with meridians 🌐 emoji, there are many more meanings. In addition to the fact that this emoji can also be used in messages, the context of which is related to geography and the structure of the globe, there are additional uses. This emoji is often used to refer to the Internet, or communication in general. You can also often find the meridian emoji in statuses or next to people’s names on social networks. In this case, it most often means “international”, “cosmopolitan”, “citizen of the world”.
Conclusion
So, today we have analyzed in detail four emoji from the Earth Emoji category. As you can see, there are no special surprises, and in most cases these emoji mean exactly what they depict. However, the emoji with blue meridians on a white background is a more universal symbol that can be safely used in messages and posts related to the Internet and communications.
