that's a big rock

"Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth."
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24 Responses:

  1. perligata says:

    Oh come on. You are regressing!

    But I demand to see a pair of hands ripping apart the ozone layer, goatse-style, as an accompaniment.

  2. keimel says:

    And yet the world is 70% covered in water.

  3. gytterberg says:

    Funny that Greenland and Iceland are still white on the left Earth.

    "Sea level density" is pretty contrived in this context... it'd be interesting if somebody smarter than me figured out what that much water would look like deposited in a single place in space. Would it just be a giant drop which would deform and gradually splash away? Would it have enough gravity to maintain some kind of spherical shape?

    • gytterberg says:

      mass, not gravity, obviously.

    • leopanthera says:

      Would it have enough gravity to maintain some kind of spherical shape?

      Yes. Even if it didn't, surface tension would hold it together.

      • gytterberg says:

        It would stick together as a sphere if undisturbed from surface tension, but I guess I was thinking about swimming in it... or whatever. I imagine that the escape velocity would be pretty low.

      • wikkit42 says:

        No. If it was exposed to vacuum (as it would be if deposited in some place in space) it would boil until its temperature went low enough to freeze. It would not have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere.

        It would make a very clean comet. How long it would last would depend on how far it was from a star.

    • mackys says:

      deform and gradually splash away

      That which did not vaporize instantly from being in hard vacuum would quickly freeze into an giant icy comet.

  4. psymbiotic says:

    Just out of curiosity, what do you think of the new NIN album(s)?

    Egan

  5. lnghnds says:

    Everywhere l look, something reminds me of her.

  6. ranotops says:

    the only thing i could think of was planetary boobies....*face-palm*

  7. lindseykuper says:

    Why measure water by volume and air by weight, I wonder?

  8. Nice. Very motherly ;-).

    *yoink*