Picture shows how all the water on Earth would fit into one 860-mile-wide ball

link to the USGS article:

ga.water.usgs.gov...

more details are in the link from the USGS. i'm very amazed.

Originally posted by boncho

Originally posted by Chrisfishenstein

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
I doubt it is only fresh water because it's shown next to a completely barren dry Earth. Water doesn't make up a huge percentage of the Earth.

No not at all.....Only around 70%.......Pretty small amount......

70 percent is covered in water. Not made up of water.

The Earth weighs 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6E+24) kilograms. The water on the earth weighs around 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilos.

The weight of the Earth divided by the weight of its water is 4 761.90476

Not very much of a percent is it?

In this case we are not talking about the earth as a whole but only the surface.

You gotta keep in mind that the oceans are only paper thin in comparison to the earths crust. And the water in the soil only goes down so far also. Lakes are like tinsy rain drops on the ground as far as the earths surface goes and oceans are shallow puddles. nothing more.

So to me it looks pretty accurate.

The real amazing part is that that little amount of moisture spread fairly evenly out over the surface of the globe creates all this life we enjoy.

reply to post by jazz10


Simple math V = (4/3) × pi × r3
In this case r = 860/2 mile or 1384.03584/2 km
V= ~1388163534.0472607 km^3

Google for the volume of all the water on the search and see if this is about the estimate?

Limbo

"http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=what+is+860+mile+in+km&oq=what+is+860+mile+in+km&aq=f&aqi=q-w1&aql=&gs_l=hp.3..33i21.29 1.5838.0.5979.29.17.3.0.0.0.386.2840.0j2j6j3.11.0...0.0.dnf5O5WiDVI&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=1dce7cc5f68d83de&biw=1280&bih=929"

www.basic-mathematics.com...

reply to post by Limbo


in the link i posted from the USGS there is a chart at the bottom. that gives you where all the water is.... along with percent of fresh and total water.

For a detailed explanation of where Earth's water is, look at the data table below. Notice how of the world's total water supply of about 333 million cubic miles (1,386 million cubic kilometers) of water, over 96 percent is saline. And, of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers. Another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground. Thus, rivers and lakes that supply surface water for human uses only constitute about 22,300 cubic miles (93,100 cubic kilometers), which is about 0.007 percent of total water, yet rivers are the source of most of the water people use.
One estimate of global water distribution:
Water source Water volume, in cubic miles Water volume, in cubic kilometers Percent of fresh water Percent of total water
Oceans, Seas, & Bays 321,000,000 1,338,000,000 -- 96.5
Ice caps, Glaciers, & Permanent Snow 5,773,000 24,064,000 68.7 1.74
Groundwater 5,614,000 23,400,000 -- 1.7
Fresh 2,526,000 10,530,000 30.1 0.76
Saline 3,088,000 12,870,000 -- 0.94
Soil Moisture 3,959 16,500 0.05 0.001
Ground Ice & Permafrost 71,970 300,000 0.86 0.022
Lakes 42,320 176,400 -- 0.013
Fresh 21,830 91,000 0.26 0.007
Saline 20,490 85,400 -- 0.006
Atmosphere 3,095 12,900 0.04 0.001
Swamp Water 2,752 11,470 0.03 0.0008
Rivers 509 2,120 0.006 0.0002
Biological Water 269 1,120 0.003 0.0001
Total 332,500,000 1,386,000,000 - 100
Source: Gleick, P. H., 1996: Water resources. In Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, ed. by S. H. Schneider, Oxford University Press, New York, vol. 2, pp.817-823.

USGS Source

Please look at this source from the USGS I have shown. It is a table format so check the link for a better look, but I highlighted the numbers of the amount of water in the oceans alone. The first number is in cubic miles, the second number is cubic kilometers. Both are in red.
321,000,000 cubic miles of water just in the oceans alone.

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1,900 million acres (7,700,000 km2)

en.wikipedia.org...

That's 7.7 million SQUARE kilometers. The oceans alone hold an estimated 1,338,000,000 CUBIC kilometers of water. One is squared, the other is cubed. There's a huge difference. Maybe if that ball were sort of oval shaped and extended up to the moon it might work. But you could bury the entire North American continent almost in just the Pacific ocean.
And the ocean volume here is in BILLIONS cubed. The land mass is Millions squared.

Originally posted by Outofcontrol
I'm sorry... I can't believe that.

I dont think thats accurate. I really had to do the math myself to actually believe such a claim.

I agree. If this is allegedly accurate, it would debunk the s**t out of the climate change people's assertions that the melting polar caps are going to flood the world.

Originally posted by Outofcontrol
I'm sorry... I can't believe that.

I dont think thats accurate. I really had to do the math myself to actually believe such a claim.

Thats what i was thinking. I believe this signals a deception into leading the masses that water shortages are . a global thing. But i actually believe it is a case of making profit from water due to the soon to be loss in revenue from oil. Oil is yesterday, technology has moved us on. Watch this space regarding a water conspiracy and remember this thread.
I was right about Egypt

Originally posted by AnonymousCitizen
Did some quick math, and the OP's source seems way off.

Two different source put the water on Earth to be 326 million trillion gallons. source and source

With 1 cubic mile containing about a trillion gallons, that gives us about 326 million cubic miles, also from source

Using the 860 mile diameter in the OP diagram, we have a radius of 430 miles. Using the formula for the volume of a sphere of V = 4/3 * pi * r^3 give us 106,009,337.5 square miles, well short of the 326 million square miles needed to hold the Earth's water.

In summary, we would need more than 3 of those round balls of water,

edit on 5/8/12 by AnonymousCitizen because: summarize results

this link gives you the details on 321 million cubic miles. ga.water.usgs.gov... at the bottom is a chart.

It's actually correct. I did a rough calculation, it is correct. Volume of a ball 860 miles in diameter is more than 333 million cubic miles. (1,3 billion cubic km)
Earth's surface area is 510 million square km, out of which is 361 million square km water. If you divide 1,3 billion / 361 million = around 3600 m which is an average depth of the oceans. (Less than 4km, 2.2 miles).

All earth's water fits into a ball 860 miles in diamater

Furthermore, this article claims this info is from a USGS release. But it cites NOTHING at all as fact. It just makes us take their word for it.

OK...While ranting I just noticed an above poster linked the actual article from the USGS.

The actual USGS article does state that this is indeed a partially inaccurate depiction since it's a 2 dimensional image trying to depict a 3 dimensional rendering. And reminds us that ball of water also would extend 860 miles into the sky.

Think of this then..if they took out all the sea sponges we would drown

reply to post by pasiphae


Yep got it made a quickie mistake in my calcs. Seems their estimate of diameter 860 mile checks out?
Limbo

Originally posted by AnonymousCitizen
Did some quick math, and the OP's source seems way off.

Two different source put the water on Earth to be 326 million trillion gallons. source and source

With 1 cubic mile containing about a trillion gallons, that gives us about 326 million cubic miles, also from source

Using the 860 mile diameter in the OP diagram, we have a radius of 430 miles. Using the formula for the volume of a sphere of V = 4/3 * pi * r^3 give us 106,009,337.5 square miles, well short of the 326 million square miles needed to hold the Earth's water.

In summary, we would need more than 3 of those round balls of water,

edit on 5/8/12 by AnonymousCitizen because: summarize results

Really, it's simple math.


4/3= 1.333333333333
1.3333 x 3.1415= 4.1885
4.1885 x ( 430 x 430 x 430 =) 79507000 = 333,015,069.5 square miles. Although I could be wrong

reply to post by AnonymousCitizen


Did you mix up square and cubed?

Earth's global ocean is the largest confirmed surface ocean on all observable planets. Approximately 71% of the planet's surface (~3.6x108 km2) is covered by saline water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas. Because it is the principal component of Earth's hydrosphere, the world ocean is integral to all known life, forms part of the carbon cycle, and influences climate and weather patterns. The total volume is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometres

The volume of the earths oceans is 1.3 billion cubic kilometres

The volume of a sphere is Pi * 4/3 * r^3

Now, working backwards, since r is the only variable that we don't know, (or more specifically, r^3) we have to isolate it.

So, we have to divide 1,300,000,000 by ((4/3) * Pi), (which is 4.1887902) to give us an answer of 310,352,139

So, now we know that r^3 is 310,352,139...

And all we have to do now, is find the cubed root of 310,352,139 to find the Radius.

Which is about 677 kilometres.

(677*677*677 = 310,288,733 = 310,352,139 ~0.5%)

Double the radius, and we have 1,354 kilometres.

Convert that to Miles, and we have: 841.336594 miles

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by AnonymousCitizen

 

Did you mix up square and cubed?

Um, yes. Yes I did.

I'm just gonna go with the fellows at the USGS on this one.

The volume of all water would be about 332.5 million cubic miles (mi3), or 1,386 million cubic kilometers (km3). The picture at the top of this page illustrates this. A cubic mile of water equals more than 1.1 trillion gallons. A cubic kilometer of water equals about 264 billion gallons.

USGS