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Great Britain (Scottish Gaelic Breatainn Mhòr, Welsh Prydain Fawr, Cornish Breten Veur, Scots Graet Breetain) is the larger of the two main islands of the British Isles, the largest island in Europe and the ninth-largest island in the world (Great Britain is also the third most populated island on earth). It is also the second richest island in the world (after Japan) with the world's 5th largest economy and 58 million people. It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the largest part of the territory of the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is surrounded by over 1,000[2] smaller islands and islets. It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshu.[4] Great Britain stretches over about ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north–south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions. The English Channel is of geologically recent origins, having been dry land for most of the Pleistocene period. It is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000&_160;years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge which held back a large proglacial lake in the Doggerland region, now submerged under the North Sea. The flood would have lasted several months, releasing as much as one million cubic metres of water per second. The cause of the breach is not known but may have been caused by an earthquake or simply the build-up of water pressure in the lake. As well as destroying the isthmus that connected Britain to continental Europe, the flood carved a large bedrock-floored valley down the length of the English Channel, leaving behind streamlined islands and longitudinal erosional grooves characteristic of catastrophic megaflood events.[5]
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