The document discusses several key facts about the Earth: 1) Estimates of the Earth's age come from radioactive dating of rocks and minerals, with the oldest being approximately 4.2 billion years old. The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago from collisions of planetesimals. 2) Multiple lines of evidence show that the Earth is approximately spherical in shape, including observations of ships disappearing over the horizon and photographs from space. While spherical, the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid due to spinning, being flattened at the poles. 3) Measurements of the positions of stars like Polaris in the northern night sky provide evidence that the Earth must be approximately spherical, as these observations could only