Like Venus, Earth is large enough to be geologically active and for its gravitational field to hold an atmosphere. Unlike Venus, it is just the right distance from the Sun so that temperature ranges allow water to exist as a liquid, a solid, and a gas. Water is thus extremely mobile and moves rapidly over the planet in a continuous hydrologic cycle. Heated by the Sun, the water moves in great cycles from the oceans to the atmosphere, over the landscape in river systems, and ultimately back to the oceans. As a result, Earth's surface has been continually changed and eroded into delicate systems of river valleys - a remarkable contrast to the surfaces of other planetary bodies where impact craters dominate. Few areas on Earth have been untouched by flowing water. As a result, river valleys are the dominant feature of its landscape. Similarly, wind action has scoured fine particles away from large areas, depositing them elsewhere as vast sand seas dominated by dunes or in sheets of loess (fine-grained soil deposits). These fluid movements are caused by gravity flow systems energized by heat from the Sun. Other geologic changes occur when the gases in the atmosphere or water react with rocks at the surface to form new chemical compounds with different properties. An important example of this process was the removal of most of Earth's carbon dioxide from its atmosphere to form carbonate rocks. However, if Earth were a little closer to the Sun, its oceans would evaporate; if it were farther from the Sun, the oceans would freeze solid. Because liquid water was present, self-replicating molecules of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen developed life early in Earth's history and have radically modified its surface, blanketing huge parts of the continents with greenery. Life thrives on this planet, and it helped create the planet's oxygen and nitrogen-rich atmosphere and moderate temperatures.
