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Pretty interesting juxtaposition considering water makes up about 71% of the Earth's surface, while the other 29% consists of continents and islands!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are notoriously terrible about estimating volumes when things are curved and volume functions are exponential. A great example of this done in 8th grade science classes across the US is to put 100ml of water in a 100ml graduated cylinder, 150ml in a 1L beaker, and ask the class which has more. Humans are awful at estimating how much volume the increased radius adds, and usually will say the 100ml. The problem…
Volume functions are not exponential. They are polynomial. (Fair point that people are lousy at estimating even polynomial functions, though...)
I believe the problem has increased exponentially since then. Now everyone is using exponentially in literally the same way as literally.
Largest 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-..…
Europa Clipper launches in October [1]. I've seen talk of crashing it into Ganymede to give JUICE novel data [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
[2] https://www.space.com/europa-clipper-might-crash-into-ganyme...
Not sure this is accurate as we've discovered that water can reside deeper in the Earth than previously imagined and in addition to that the density of water at the surface is different than at the bottom of the ocean. I suppose they are also accounting for the salt being removed too. But my argument is probably in the margin of error so what do I know? https://www.technology.org/how-and-why/what-would-happen-if-...…
The density of water at the bottom of the ocean is actually quite similar to the density on the surface; it differs by only a few percent. Gases compress proportionally to pressure, but liquids act more similar to solids and compress very little even under enormous pressures. The oceans are only about 3.5% salt by weight, so that doesn't make a huge difference, either.
I find this pretty interesting, https://phys.org/news/2023-11-reveal-earth-surface-penetrate...
> This sphere includes all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant. Does it include water in the mantle? ( https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=111648 ) or other non-liquid water for that matter like hydrates (ebsom salts, etc)
Largest 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-..…
> This sphere includes all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant. Does it include water in the mantle? ( https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=111648 ) or other non-liquid water for that matter like hydrates (ebsom salts, etc)
"All the Earth's FRESH Water"
Just a few quick calculations to make it more relatable... They say the smallest sphere of freshwater lakes and rivers amounts to 93,113 cu km. There are 1 bil cu m per cu km. With a global population of 8.2 bil people, that comes to 11,355 cu m per person. That's a 22.5 meter wide/deep/tall cube (or about 7 or 8 stories tall building). If we use the sphere that includes groundwater, 10,633,450 cu km. Then we end up…