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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."
For all you metric fans out there, the volume 320 × 10^6 cubic miles is approx. 133.4 × 10^7 cubic km with an average depth of 3.69 km.
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"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Yes, IIRC by the same mechanism Venus has a lot of relatively heavier elements (Carbon, Oxygen, Sulfur), but barely any Hydrogen if you compare it to Earth and count the oceans as part of the atmosphere.
Water (gas) is split by solar radiation higher up, and the light hydrogen is carried upwards, and some of these particles bump into each other and often enough these bumps add up to escape velocity for one particle. Supposedly solar winds also play a significant role, and as Mars and Venus don't have a magnetic field anymore to protect them, over the eons all the hydrogen was lost. One more factor for the Drake Equation!
The title "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" refers to the distance traveled, not the depth.
For the 640 billion people who have no idea what the fuck a mile is, here is your public translation service. The ocean's volume is about 1300 million cubic kilometres, and the average ocean depth is about 3.7 Km.
I know it's got the word, "sounder" in it, but the lead weights *are* the depth sounder, it's got nothing to do with sonar. A depth sounder is like a plumb line, except it's wet, and much longer.
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