In summer the reverse process takes place: The (comparatively) cool earth becomes a waste dump for unwanted heat that accumulates inside the house.

FORBES: Underground Cash

This bare, sandy earth then becomes an effective rain trap - with no vegetation, water cannot be lost through transpiration (the evaporation of water from plants).

BBC: Termites 'engineer fairy circles'

The most compelling case for asteroid mining is for a yet-undesired element that turns out to be not abundant in the earth's crust and becomes suddenly valuable because of some future technological advance.

WSJ: Exhausting the Earth's Resources? Not So Fast

What was a continuous, miraculous conduit from the depths of the Earth or the heart of the atom becomes a noxious, tangled and inaccessible mess about which, for months, nothing can be done.

ECONOMIST: Lessons from Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima

For Mrs Gandhi, if she becomes prime minister, that will mean coming down to earth but somehow remaining above the mire.

ECONOMIST: Can the second Mrs Gandhi govern India?

Dr Adams has found that there is one chance in 100, 000 that this would cause the earth to be ejected from the solar system before the sun becomes a red giant.

ECONOMIST: To the ends of the earth

The spaceship Nostromo is hauling a dreary cargo of ore back to Earth when it inadvertently allows an unpleasant intruder on board, and ordinary life becomes a nightmare.

NEWYORKER: That��s Life

On the lam in America (his second-in-command, played by Ben Kingsley, is out to get him), Aladeen becomes friends with a vegan activist, Zoey (Anna Faris), who runs the Free Earth Collective, an organic-produce store in Brooklyn.

NEWYORKER: The Dictator

The problem becomes less acute once they've cleared the atmosphere, but the high speeds required to escape the Earth's gravitational field (more than 6.8 miles per second) necessitate an enormous amount of energy.

FORBES: Houston, We Have Problems