An xkcd Drain the Oceans https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ is highly entertaining on this vein.
All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
201–210 of 290 posts
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#202Fun fact: If you did this, everyone would die.
Plus every other nation on the earth would be mad at the US for taking it all
Except for the Dutch. https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#203Anyone see this and think “holy crap we better scale up desalination?”
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exponentials eventually grow much faster than polynomials, no matter what the exponent is. Since we're being pedantic, that last clause should be: "as long as the exponent is greater than 1."
We can go a step further with the pedantry, and say that the commenter above is using an unreasonably narrow definition of the work "exponential" and that there are others which allow x^2 to be described as "exponential". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exponential
We could, but I would describe it as "mathematically accurate". Which is not incompatible with "unreasonably narrow", given that the definition of "exponential" has recently gotten polluted enough that it is now often synonymous with "fast growing". But what's the point of arguing over definitions if we're going to start with a baseline of saying that there is no basis upon which to argue definitions other than recent conventional usage?
> there are others which allow x^2 to be described as "exponential".
Those same definitions allow x*1000 to be described as "exponential". (x*1000000 would be "more exponential"!)
If you're describing something as exponential, then either you're just saying "fast growing", or you're trying to describe the type of growth. If you're describing the type of growth, then neither x*1000 nor x^2 is exponential. The fact that x^2 has an exponent in it is no more relevant than saying that x*1000=x*10^3 and x*10^3 has an exponent in it.
(Again, I sadly accept that in today's world, "exponentially" is being used to mean "fast growing", or sometimes more specifically "faster than linear". If I'm trying to understand what someone means, then it doesn't matter whether I find that usage to be a good idea or not.)
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#205I don't really follow a lot of comments questioning the choice of shape, methodology, exclusion of water in the mantle etc.
I believe the purpose of the image is to evoke sense of preciousness and responsibility towards the water we have - maybe how much for granted we take our "blue planet".
To me, this is an amazingly effective and visually poignant way of doing just that.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#206NB: The infographic and articles are based on a 1993 publication. More recent research, from about 2017, suggests that there's about as much water in Earth's mantle as in all the oceans, so we either need another drop roughly the volume of the first, or the second drop should be greatly expanded. See: "There’s as much water in Earth’s mantle as in all the oceans" (2017) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133963-th…
> or the second drop should be greatly expanded.
The second drop is called "liquid fresh water".
I'm not sure if I would want to categorize the water in the mantle as either "liquid" or "fresh". Most of that stuff is way above the critical point, not to mention saturated with rocky salts.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#207Largest ocean in our solar system isn't even on Earth, apparently: > ... Ganymede’s ocean is even bigger than Europa’s—and might be the largest in the entire solar system. “The Ganymede ocean is believed to contain more water than the Europan one,” he says. “Six times more water in Ganymede’s ocean than in Earth's ocean, and three times more than Europa.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overlooked-ocean-..…
Ganymede having an ocean surprised me given that its surface appears rocky in photos. Apparently, it’s an internal ocean hidden under the surface.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#208The water spheres look small but here's a fun back-of-the-envelope computation. The article states there is 22.3k mi^3 of water in lakes and rivers. One person in the USA (a high consumer) consumes 82 gallons of water every day (source: epa.gov) which is 7.4E-11 mi^3. Let's say each person does this for a long-lived 100 years, giving 7.4E-9 mi^3 per lifetime. So the 22.3k mi^3 of lake and river water can support 3 trillion lifetimes. That's not including the much larger amounts of ground water and ocean water. Those "small spheres" are huge!
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#209Similarly, all of the gold we have mined could form a cube measuring 22 meters on each side [1] and would fit comfortably within a baseball infield [2].
[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/chart-how-much-gold-is-i...
[2]: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf (p. 19)
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#210I’ve alerted all my friends in Kentucky. That thing could blow any time.