Water on Earth

There are a number of images circulating online about what the earth would look like without water. Here is one of them:

 

Picture Credit: Graphic by Howard Perlman, USGS. Globe Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. [click to enlarge]
There are three blue spheres in this image. The large one, with a diameter of just over 860 miles, represents a bubble containing all the water on earth. The smaller one to the right is a sphere of about 169.5 miles, and it represents all the freshwater on earth, most of which is underground. The smallest bubble, which you’d probably miss if I didn’t put the red arrow there to point to it, is a sphere of about 34.9 miles. That represents all the freshwater in lakes, rivers and streams. That’s what we have to water our crops, our lawns, our golf courses, wash our cars, cook our rice and — drink!

There is something wrong with this graphic. It looks like you can see the ridges along the continents. Those are actually grossly exaggerated.

If the earth were reduced to the size of a bowling ball, and you’d swipe your fingertips over Mt. Everest, you would not feel the mountain. It would not be noticeable as a feature on the bowling ball. Likewise, if you were to scratch your fingernails over the Grand Canyon, you would not get caught in it. You would not even feel it. The earth without water reduced to the size of a bowling ball would be smoother than a real bowling ball, which has an occasional scratch here and there from normal use. The scratches on that real bowling ball, using that scale, are deeper than the deepest ocean trenches are on earth.

 

One thought on “Water on Earth

  1. Unknown Unknown

    What amazes me about this post is how the water is something like a barely perceptible (to touch) film, even though the oceans are so deep. Big wow factor for me.

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