Abyssal plains were not recognized as distinct physiographic features of the sea floor until the late 1940s and, until very recently, none had been studied on a systematic basis. They are poorly preserved in the sedimentary record, because they tend to be consumed by the subduction process.
The first man to discover that the earth moves around the sun was an Italian scientist named Galileo Galilei.
Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 meters per second--or roughly 1,000 miles per hour. As schoolchildren, we learn that the earth is moving about our sun in a very nearly circular orbit.n 1989, the COBE satellite was placed in orbit about the earth (again, the earth is the frame of reference!) to measure the long-diluted radiation echo of the birth of our universe.