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New Estimates Say Earth's Oceans Smaller Than Once Believed
Velcroman1 writes with this snippet from Fox News: "Using lead weights and depth sounders, scientists have made surprisingly accurate estimates of the ocean's depths in the past. Now, with satellites and radar, researchers have pinned down a more accurate answer to that age-old query: How deep is the ocean? And how big? As long ago as 1888, John Murray dangled lead weights from a rope off a ship to calculate the ocean's volume — the product of area and mean ocean depth. Using satellite data, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute set out to more accurately answer that question — and found out that it's 320 million cubic miles. And despite miles-deep abysses like the Mariana Trench, the ocean's mean depth is just 2.29 miles, thanks to the varied and bumpy ocean floor."
Well, it was more volumous. But all those sponges soaked up so much.
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I wonder if you need to correct for the oil if you use the Gulf of Mexico units. Or perhaps it just counts for that date.
Morpheus, God of Dreams.
Yes, but that's meaningless to most people, it's a VLN without context. For all you fans of real, visceral numbers you can relate to, that volume (1.33 x 10^9 km^3) is approximately equal to the amount of water in the earth's oceans.
Hope that helps you to understand the magnitude of the number. Glad to be of service.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
How many Libraries of Congress would that be?
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2.29 miles isn't even 1 league! I thought the ocean was 20,000 leagues deep!
Fox News will retract this story once they realize that it increases the percentage of the ocean filled with oil. And then denigrate the scientists involved as Marxists.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
We must stop global warming!! Our oceans are getting smaller, we, um, need to, uh, what?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
About 12 million football fields worth.
640 billion people? I suppose new estimates say Earth's population is larger than once believed...
To be fair, government didn't force them to drill there. It disallowed drilling in some locations so the company evaluated risks and decided to drill there.
Now that we know how well they do evaluating risks, I am rather pleased that government put some restrictions on their drilling. Because it is clear that they choose a risk of a massive catastrophe if they believe that there are profits involved and can't be trusted in this matter. I just wish that the government(s) would have put much more restrictions in place.
640 B should be enough for any planet.
* ducks *
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Well, if you put all the water after each other, it would reach from here to the moon and back. maybe that helps us grasp such a big number...
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org