It is the strangest of all places, and there is everything in the world to learn about it. It can keep us awake and jubilant with questions for millennia ahead if we learn not to meddle and not to destroy. Our great hope is in being such a young species, thinking in language only a short while, still learning, still growing up.
Seven Wonders by Lewis Thomas, before 1983
Weorold, the Old English for 'world', is a compound of wer, 'man', and eld, 'age'. Thomas suggests the modern world itself as the first of his seven wonders, and notes that 'world' is derived from the Indo-European root wiros, which meant 'man' (apparently, the correct spelling is wiHrós).
Image: map of space debris orbiting Earth via Reddit