Aug 12, 2009 [b]: All of the water... all of the air
 

Imagine every drop of water on Earth gathered into one place. Now all of the air. Is this what you imagined?

http://cellar.org/2009/E055330-Globa...volume-SPL.jpg

air is pink?

That water one doesn't seem right. All of the water in the world would fill up a sphere whose diameter is roughly the width of France? That's it? The oceans cover most of this planet; and oceans are more than 4 cm deep.

According to wikipedia, the Pacific ocean alone has 10,803,873,000,000 cubic kilometers of water. That's either 10 times more or 1 millions times more than what the picture shows for all of Earth's water (depending on whether you define a billion as a thousand-million or a million-million).

Either way, somebody's math was way off here. I suspect they looked at the surface area and confused it for the volume.

I agree with newtimer. That doesn't seem right at all. And come to think of it neither does the pink air.

Yeah, I agree, the graph might be skewed. Its probably not counting salt content in the ocean though. That would take up quite a bit of the whole precentage. But I agree with you guys, this picture doesnt look right

In LA, yes.

If you look closely, you'll notice they forgot to take the water from the north polar region. It's still locked up in ice.

Methinks Wiki must have it wrong. (I know, blasphemy and sacrelige!)

To get 10,803,873,000,000 cubic km, you need:
1,000,000 km wide
by
1,000,000 km long
by
10.803973 km deep.

While 10 km does approximate the deepest parts of the ocean (still not allowing for the "shallow" areas), there aint no way it is 10 million km across.

The sphere on the picture looks about right to me; remember the oceans are (comparitively) just a very shallow layer smeared around the surface.

I haven't found the wiki source article, but I suspect someone incorrectly converted cubic metres to cubic kilometres.
Linear kilometre = 1,000 linear metres.
Square kilometre = 1,000,000 square metres.
Cubic kilometre = 1,000,000,000 cubic metres.
I guess they had cubic metres and just divided by 1,000.

I thought that was San francisco. [gay smiley]

Sure! This spring we had pink air. And it rained mud.

No, REALLY! So much dirt was kicked up during a day long windstorm that the air turned pinkish red. (I was 100 miles away and saw that ominous sky) Then it rained. It rained mud. And, since all our dirt is red...

"Do you hear what I'm thinking? Is it how you imagined?"
Sorry, a line from one of my very favourite Neil Finn songs.

Link. Please.

Planet Claire?


one thing to realize about ocean depths is that it won't matter where a fairly big (~200m or larger) asteroid hits -- the water will be pushed aside as if it wasn't even there.

I sort of remember another statistic that kind of surprised me a few years ago. If al the people on the planet were to stand in one place, each given a 2 foot square to stand in, we'd all fit on just a few acres of land. That's 6 billion+ people!

And one port-a-potty. :thepain:

I thought the air in L.A. was brown...:headshake

Which is why I'm unclear why people scream overpopulation.

Under population in most first world countries is creating HUGE problems for us.

Assuming two square feet, rather than a two foot square (4 square feet), that would be 12 billion square feet, or over 275000 acres. So, more than a few.

That would be about 430 square miles. or, a square a bit under 21 miles across, so maybe still a bit smaller than one might expect. About four times the original size of DC.

Suppose that depends on what one means by "just a few acres of land"

An acre is 43,560 square feet. If everyone is given a 2 foot square (meaning a square 2 foot x 2 foot or 4 square feet?) then 10,890 people could stand in an acre. You'd need a bit more than 550,000 acres to hold 6 billion people. That's about 860 square miles or a square a bit less than 30 miles on a side.

Hey, maybe the picture of the water is supposed to represent all of the fresh water on Earth, not the oceans. That would be all rivers, lakes, ice caps, glaciers, frozen mountain tops, reservoirs, clouds, moisture in the air, and water sitting in our toilet tanks.

Maybe. It said every drop of water, and no matter how much salt you add, it's still the same H2O.

Damn statistics again. We always have to ask the "four out of five dentists" question.

The water graph shows all the water and does it accurately, I am confident. The oceans seem deep to humans but they are a very thin layer compared to the earth. Yes, it is surprisingly little. That is the point.

Its similar to taking your rolled up freshly delivered newspaper and spreading it out one page at a time so it covers the entire yard. Or cutting up a playing card to make a stip of cardboard a couple of metres long. We're playing with dimensions here.


As for the population thing, consider the following.
An old style phone booth is somewhat less that one square metre in floor space.
Squeezed in a bit, we can fit 6 people per square metre - allowing for large well-built types as well as children and slim types.
There are 1 million square metres per square kilometre, so we can get 6 million people per square kilometre.

If we allow two vertical metres for each group of six people, we can get 500 layers of people per vertical kilometre.

Hence we can get 6 million x 500 = 3 billion people per cubic kilometre.

Given current global population of around 6.7 billion, the entire human population of the earth could be squeezed into slightly more than two cubic kilometres.

That is about one cubic mile, for you old fashioned types.

Remember, that is squished the hell in with no provision for air supply or movement or anything. Don't even think about the toilet situation!

I've also read that all the gold ever discovered on earth would make a cube 18 metres along each side.

Ok, I see what you're saying. It's not the Earth's surface, it's the entire mass for comparison. Like I said, statistics. You have to examine them further.

People get nervous sailing out of sight of land.
I aways tell them, "Ah come on! We're always within 5 miles of land!"

I always ask - can you swim 5 miles? - Answer - No. - Then don't worry about going 50 or a 100 miles offshore.

Fair enough. It's just Wiki though.

:)

It just looks like a very strange, colorful pair of boobies to me.

That reminds me...When ARE the Golden Globes awarded? :D

Who uses a porta potty, man?

Haggis!


"When's Hendrix playin, man? Ah been waitin 40 years, an I aint goin home til I hear Hendrix play..."