articles - When do you say "Earth" and when "The Earth"?



I'm reading the page on Wikipeda:


Earth [...] is the third planet from the Sun[...]
The Earth's human population is [...]

Then the University of Tennessee's page


The Earth is certainly the most familiar planet [...]
Apollo 11 shot of Earth
Galileo shot of the Earth and Moon

I think no other planets have this problem. Nobody would say "The Mars is certainly the first planet that humans will travel to", so what's happening here?


So what is the correct way of referring to the planet that i'm on right now? Does it require "THE" or not? How come English-speaking Earthlings keep changing the rules in the middle of a paragraph?




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