Portal:World
The World Portal
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.
In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind.
Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.
In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". (Full article...)
Selected articles -
World War I, or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides. The war also helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including the first large-scale use of machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.
The causes of World War I included the rise of the German Empire, which disturbed the long-standing balance of power in Europe, and the exacerbation of imperial rivalries, as reflected in new alliances and an arms race between the great powers. Tensions in the Balkans reached a breaking point on 28 June 1914 when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war on 28 July, upon which the Russian Empire mobilised in Serbia's defence. In early August, Germany declared war on Russia and France; the United Kingdom entered the war after Germany invaded Belgium. Germany's strategy in 1914 was to quickly defeat France, but its advance was halted in September, and the Western Front solidified into a near-continuous line of fortified trenches from the English Channel to Switzerland. The Eastern Front was more dynamic, but neither side gained a decisive advantage, despite costly offensives. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in November, which was followed by a failed Allied campaign at Gallipoli. Japan and Italy also joined the Allies. (Full article...)
UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organization within the United Nations Secretariat which promotes the interests of developing countries in the governance of international trade, financial flows and technology transfer. It was established in 1964 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development It reports to both the General Assembly and the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). UNCTAD is composed of 195 member states and works with non-governmental organizations worldwide; its permanent secretariat is at UNOG in Geneva, Switzerland.
The primary objective of UNCTAD is to formulate policies relating to all aspects of development, including trade, aid, transport, finance and technology. It was created in response to concerns among developing countries that existing international institutions like GATT (since replaced by the World Trade Organization), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank were not properly organized to handle the particular problems of developing countries; UNCTAD would provide a forum where developing nations could discuss and address problems relating to their economic development. (Full article...)- Miss World is the oldest existing international beauty pageant. It was created in the United Kingdom by Eric Morley in 1951. Since his death in 2000, Morley's widow, Julia Morley, has chaired the pageant. Along with Miss Universe, Miss International, and Miss Earth, it is one of the Big Four beauty pageants.
The current Miss World is Suchata Chuangsri of Thailand who was crowned on 31 May 2025 in Hyderabad, India. (Full article...) 
The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's international governing body. The competition has been held every four years since 1991. The inaugural tournament, then called the FIFA Women's World Championship, was held in China.
Under the tournament's current format of 32 open slots, the host nation's team is automatically entered as the first slot and national teams vie for the remaining 31 slots in a three-year qualification phase. The tournament, called the World Cup Finals, is contested at venues within the host nation(s) over about one month. (Full article...)
Map showing urban areas with at least ten million inhabitants in 2025, according to the GHSL
A megacity is a very large city, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) in its "World Urbanization Prospects" report defines megacities as urban agglomerations with over 10 million inhabitants. Reports from academics, the European Council, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development delineate them as the metropolitan areas that are inhabited by more than a total population of 10 million people. The fast growth of the former is attributed to the proliferation of the latter. Infrequently in some sources, from five to eight million is considered the minimum threshold, along with a population density of at least 2,000 per square kilometre. The terms conurbation, metropolis, and metroplex are also applied to the latter.
The total number of megacities in the world varies between different sources and their publication dates. The world had 32 according to EU Global Human Settlement Layer (2024), 33 according to UN DESA (2025), 39 according to the OECD (2020), and 42 according to Demographia (2025). In total, at most 46 unique places are mentioned as megacities across these selected sources, although some of these are just agglomerated differently between them. A good percentage of these urban agglomerations are in the Global South's most populous countries – China and India. The other three-to-five countries with more than one megacity are Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, and the United States. African megacities are present in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa; European megacities are present in France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Turkey (also in Asia); megacities can be found in Latin America in the countries of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. (Full article...)
Human impact on the environment (or anthropogenic environmental impact) refers to changes to biophysical environments and to ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources caused directly or indirectly by humans. Modifying the environment to fit the needs of society (as in the built environment) is causing severe effects including global warming, environmental degradation (such as ocean acidification), mass extinction, and biodiversity loss, ecological crisis, and ecological collapse. Some human activities that cause damage (either directly or indirectly) to the environment on a global scale include population growth, neoliberal economic policies, and rapid economic growth. Overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution, and deforestation are also contributing to this problem. Some of the problems, including global warming and biodiversity loss, have been proposed as representing catastrophic risks to the survival of the human species.
The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity. The term was first used in the technical sense by Russian geologist Alexey Pavlov, and it was first used in English by British ecologist Arthur Tansley in reference to human influences on climax plant communities. The atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen introduced the term "Anthropocene" in the mid-1970s. The term is sometimes used in the context of pollution produced from human activity since the start of the Agricultural Revolution but also applies broadly to all major human impacts on the environment. Many of the actions taken by humans that contribute to a heated environment stem from the burning of fossil fuel from a variety of sources, such as electricity, cars, planes, space heating, manufacturing, or the destruction of forests. (Full article...)
Non-UN member states recognised by at least one UN member stateNon-UN member states recognised only by other non-UN member states
A number of polities have declared independence and sought diplomatic recognition from the international community as sovereign states, but have not been universally recognised as such. These entities often have de facto control of their territory. A number of such entities have existed in the past.
There are two traditional theories used to indicate how a sovereign state comes into being. The declarative theory (codified in the 1933 Montevideo Convention) defines a state as a person in international law if it meets the following criteria: (Full article...)
General images -
Battle during the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
Lithified stromatolites on the shores of Lake Thetis, Western Australia. Archean stromatolites are the first direct fossil traces of life on Earth. (from History of Earth)
Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
A banded iron formation from the 3.15 Ga Moodies Group, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Red layers represent the times when oxygen was available; gray layers were formed in anoxic circumstances. (from History of Earth)
Pillar erected by Ashoka, a Mauryan Emperor in India
Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 (from Human history)
Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
A combination of different cosmological Middle Eastern axis mundi ideas from the post-classical age (The Wonders of Creation by Zakariya al-Qazwini) showing a flat round Earth surrounded by a range of Qaf Mountains, resting on the back of a giant bull (Kujata or Behemoth), which in turn stands on a vast fish (Bahamut or Leviathan) in a cosmic ocean held up by an angel or jinn (from Earth)
Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Earth depicted to scale alongside the planetary-mass objects of the Inner Solar System. From left: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars and Ceres. (from Earth)
Map of Earth's 16 principal tectonic plates (from Earth)
Vitruvian Man, c. 1490 by Leonardo da Vinci, epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
A 580 million year old fossil of Spriggina floundensi, an animal from the Ediacaran period. Such life forms could have been ancestors to the many new forms that originated in the Cambrian Explosion. (from History of Earth)
Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible). Continuing with green and red bands of aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
The Colosseum in Rome (from Human history)
One of the eleven Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela constructed during the Zagwe dynasty in Ethiopia (from Human history)
A pillar at Neolithic Göbekli Tepe
Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
Cuneiform inscription, eastern Turkey
Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
A depiction of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale. Ma means "million years ago", Ga means "billion years ago". (from History of Earth)
A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
13th-century French historiated initial with the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry)
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
An impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Overall increase in average surface air temperature juxtaposed with natural drivers: human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Successive dispersals of Homo erectus (yellow), Homo neanderthalensis (ochre) during Out of Africa I and Homo sapiens (red, Out of Africa II), with the numbers of years since they appeared before present. (from Human history)
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Megacities of the world -
Xiamen, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, Haicang, and Xiang'an. All together, these cover an area of 1,700.61 square kilometers (656.61 sq mi) with a population of 5,163,970 as of 2020 and estimated at 5.365 million as of 31 December 2025. The urbanized area of the city has spread from its original island to include most parts of all six of its districts, as well as 4 Zhangzhou districts (Xiangcheng, Longwen, Longhai and Changtai), which form a built-up area of 7,284,148 inhabitants. This area also connects with Quanzhou in the north, making up a metropolis of nearly ten million people. The Kinmen Islands (Quemoy) administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan) lie less than 6 kilometers (4 mi) away separated by Xiamen Bay. As part of the Opening Up Policy under Deng Xiaoping, Xiamen became one of China's original four special economic zones opened to foreign investment and trade in the early 1980s.
Xiamen Island possesses a major international seaport. The Port of Xiamen is a well-developed first-class trunk line port in the Asia-Pacific region. It is ranked the 7th-largest container port in China and ranks 15th in the world. It is the 4th port in China with the capacity to handle 6th-generation large container ships. On 31 August 2010, Xiamen Port incorporated the neighboring port of Zhangzhou to form the largest port of China's Southeast. Ever since the 12th century, Xiamen was also an important origin for many migrants to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The overseas Chinese used to support Xiamen's educational and cultural institutions. (Full article...)
Did you know -
- ... that 28 trillion tonnes of ice were lost worldwide between 1994 and 2017 due to climate change?
- ... that, according to a local myth, a headless priest cursed León Viejo with earthquakes?
- ... that An African Song or Chant from Barbados was nominated for inscription on UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register by someone who saw it in an online exhibition?
- ... that Ian Matakis once won a World Series of Poker bracelet while competing in another tournament at the same time?
- ... that Olympic breakdancer Sun Chen is nicknamed "Quake" as he was born on the day of a deadly earthquake?
- ... that in 2021 Krisztofer Mészáros became the first Hungarian male gymnast in 22 years to qualify for a World Artistic Gymnastics Championships all-around final?
- ... that the Christchurch Seagull Pit has been described as the "ninth wonder of the world"?
- ... that Star Trek's spore drive is a biological faster-than-light engine that was inspired by the real-world science of mycology?
Countries of the world -
Zambia (/ˈzæmbiə, ˈzɑːm-/), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered to the north by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania to the northeast, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Botswana (via a tiny border of Chobe District) and Zimbabwe to the south, Namibia (via the Caprivi Strip) to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the core economic hubs of Zambia.
Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. Following European expeditions in the eighteenth century, the British Empire began to consolidate control of the area following the 1890 British Ultimatum against the Portuguese, who had claimed the area between Angola and Mozambique in the 1885 Pink Map. Britain formed the British protectorates of Barotziland–North-Western Rhodesia and