Slashdot Mirror
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."
After reading the article (SHOCKING!)
I wonder if they could get ships to carry a device to collect depth and undersea mountain patterns and then aggregate the data later. Might be cheaper the 2 billion dollars.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"... Yes, but that's meaningless to most people ..." inside the United States.
Seriously... miles? In 2010? You know there's less than 350 million of you, right? How about you take one of those trillion dollars you spend on being the world police and catch up with the rest of world by switching to metric.