As an aside, the smallest ball is a few hours travel by bicycle, or two days on foot. Planet Earth is large, but it brought home how it is not so large. I would have guessed that 35 miles was a lot smaller than is shown.
All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
211–220 of 290 posts
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#212Wow, imagine all the data centers you could cool with all that water
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#213I was curious how much of this water we lose to space via evaporation. Looking around, apparently not much; only few molecules achieve escape velocity. But can't find a good calculation yet.
Over the life of Earth to date, about a quarter of its initial water bounty:
https://www.sciencenordic.com/chemistry-climate-denmark/the-...>
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#214I think this is kind of useless information unless presented with other spheres for humans, structures, animals, plants, forests etc. for comparison. And ants.
This was my first thought too.
I had no idea where to start. ChatGPT had a rather impressive looking “proof of work” that put all living humans into a 976m-diameter sphere, compared to the ~1384km-diameter sphere. Ie ~1km human sphere and 1,384km water sphere.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#215NB: 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…
Does any of that water, though, ever make it onto the Earth's surface? I'm guessing not, or only miniscule amounts over geologic time through volcanism. For all intents and purposes, I think only counting "surface" water is more useful and intuitive. It's essentially any water that can participate in the hydrologic cycle on Earth, and that water locked beneath the crust doesn't really "matter" for what I think the in…
We don't have access to any part of the planet below a depth of 2.5 miles, so the image should compare the volume of accessible water to the volume of accessible Earth, except then it would fail in its dishonest mission to make people say "gosh that sphere looks relatively small compared to the other sphere, I must restrict myself to ten-second showers."
Even if it was accessible water to accessible non-water I don't really see how the metric is relevant in any decision making. Is it warning against a half-baked plan to mix water with every available cubic meter of soil or rock? Because there wouldn't be enough water to do that crazy thing? Thanks, I'll bear that in mind.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson says the earth scaled down to the size of a billiard ball would be smoother than any billiard ball ever made.
Not completely accurate, it depends on your definition of smoothness. The Earth scaled down to the size of a billiard ball would have a texture more like sandpaper, certainly not what most people would consider smooth.
Sandpaper also come in different roughness. So in this case maybe a 300-400 grit sandpaper?
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#217Ok I don't mean to be pedanntic but a sphere is just the boundary of a ball. If we are trying to capture volume we should be talking about balls of water.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#218Ok I don't mean to be pedanntic but a sphere is just the boundary of a ball. If we are trying to capture volume we should be talking about balls of water.
Counter pedant: a ball is indeed what you get when, as in TFA, you put water “in a sphere”
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Volume functions are not exponential. They are polynomial. (Fair point that people are lousy at estimating even polynomial functions, though...)
Thanks for adding the mathematical definition! You might be interested to know that the first definition of "exponential" is "of or relating to an exponent". The second definition is, as you say, "involving a variable in an exponent". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exponential As this is an internet forum and not a rigorous mathematical setting, I assert that my use of "exponential" is correct in context…
I'm not sure if you are kidding but just in case you are not this is very misleading and in fact misguided.
Refering to polynomials as exponential just results in confusion essentially removing any meaning from the word. Any function can be written as something involving exponents, so that statement becomes meaningless.
Re: All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019)
#220NB: 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…
Does any of that water, though, ever make it onto the Earth's surface? I'm guessing not, or only miniscule amounts over geologic time through volcanism. For all intents and purposes, I think only counting "surface" water is more useful and intuitive. It's essentially any water that can participate in the hydrologic cycle on Earth, and that water locked beneath the crust doesn't really "matter" for what I think the in…
The article has a strong focus on "available to humans" and "that humans depend on". Many of the water beneath the crust is exactly that, pumping it up is an important source of drinking water. (In my country, the Netherlands, it's the primary, almost only, source of drinking water)