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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."
So, what were the earlier estimates? I'm on Slashdot => I did not RTFA.
Do they consider the effect of evaporation? Earth loses some of its atmosphere to space constantly and it's not too improbable that some water vapor is also lost in this way...
Well, it was more volumous. But all those sponges soaked up so much.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
From Article: It would take 10 ships 20 years to measure all the ocean-floor depths with an echsounder, according to published U.S. Navy estimates.
"That would come to about $2 billion," Smith says. "NASA is spending more than that on a probe to [the Jupiter moon] Europa."
Right, it costs more to send something into space. There are a lot of scientific pursuits less expensive that space travel. I'm confused...what's this comparison trying to say?
If the quote had been "Nasa is spending less than that on a probe....", then it would have offered commentary on how prohibitively expensive the project is (if true). Instead, it costs less to image the earth than image Europa. What are they saying?
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.
for suggesting climate change deniers will jump all over this as proof of their POV in 3...2...1...
There is an awful lot of Pacific that sees ~0 traffic.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
2.29 miles isn't even 1 league! I thought the ocean was 20,000 leagues deep!
Could these numbers be confirmed by gravimetric measurements of the tides? The moon, sun, and to a very small extent the planet Jupiter, raise tides in the ocean and induce a gravitational moment. It seems like we could measure that and use it to approximate the mass of the oceans and therefore their volume, though off the top of my head I'm not sure about the details.
There are tons of places off the coasts that are far shallower with lots of oil. They couldn't drill in those spots because the government wouldn't let them, thus forcing them to drill in the more risky deep ocean wells where gas likes to freeze and make your rigs explode.
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!
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
Erm, 12,000 feet is pretty damn deep water.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Did you read the first sentence?
"Using lead weights and *depth sounders*"
That is what they used to do. But it only samples a tiny bit of the ocean and is biased towards certain parts of the ocean, like shipping channels. As the article says, the depth of the ocean is not very smooth, so non-global estimates won't be accurate.
Do they include the extreme edge of the oceans (i.e. beaches) where the 'depth' is only a few millimeters? Or do they go out to sea a standard distance before they start measuring?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
two breadboxes even!
That doesn't really make any sense at all
"A big enough box could hold the world" -- Carl Sanburg
We must stop global warming!! Our oceans are getting smaller, we, um, need to, uh, what?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I never thought I'd see the day when /. links to fox news.
It's a fairly well written article though. I'd say it's head and shoulders above anything they've linked to on Tom's Hardware, but that's not saying much.
moox. for a new generation.
That's a lot of bread...
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
How much oil would it take to pollute 320 million cubic miles of seawater?
Having lived their entire lives without seeing the ocean, two old women take a trip to the Pacific coast. Upon arriving on the beach, one looks out toward the horizon and says to the other, "That's funny, I thought it would be bigger."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"To make a box big enough to hold the world from scratch, you must first invent the universe" - Carl Sagan
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
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.
That's 3.69 kilometers!
Have gnu, will travel.
640 billion people? I suppose new estimates say Earth's population is larger than once believed...
Yes it does, if you change depth for volume in the sentence, and change some other words, remove some, add some, and change the order of the words.
the floor of the ocean has a smaller radius than the surface
Shit, I forgot the dot. 6.40 billion people. Sorry, too late to be awake.
He's talking about the difference between assuming a spherical earth and a flat earth. It effects volume-related calculations.
no he just screwed up the conversion to metric....
It's still wrong. For one thing, it's more like 6.697 now. More importantly, the zero on the end suggests two significant digits, which is much more accurate than your actual estimate. You should have written it as 6.4, or, preferably, 6.7.
Maybe FOX got it from a real news source, but I don't trust FOX.
That just means you're being brainwashed by a different news sources. You shouldn't trust ANY of them.
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.
Forcing them to drill?!
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It's still wrong.
No, it's not: 6.697 - 300 millions = 6.397
the zero on the end suggests two significant digits, which is much more accurate than your actual estimate. You should have written it as 6.4
Yeah, you're right.
640 B should be enough for any planet.
* ducks *
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
No, it's not: 6.697 - 300 millions = 6.397
Hah. Ok, fair enough.
valenzetti equation*
[citation needed]
I grew up with a boat, and our "sounder" was sonar. There's a reason why it's called a sounder...
Except that there isn't really any benefit to using SI over Imperial measurements. The benefit is to everyone using the -same- measurement system regardless of what it is. That being said, with most of the world using SI, that would be more logical...
Corporation = obligated to provide profits to shareholders. If that was the only way to chase profits, then their hand was effectively "forced", indirectly, by the government regulation.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Except that there isn't really any benefit to using SI over Imperial measurements
At least the most commonly used SI units were created specifically because doing calculations with them is far less error prone within the same unit (ie, cm to km as opposed to inches to miles) and the units themselves are based on environmentally sensical points (ie, 0 is the temperature at which water freezes (at standard pressure))
I am glad as hell I didn't have use imperial measurements in engineering.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Nice link, thanks. They still aren't sure exactly the method that caused Mars to lose its atmosphere, but that pages shows some interesting probabilities.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
By the counting method of hard drive companies, that would almost be a teraperson!
Lucky for you, although half that number also have no idea what a kilometre is, they also have no idea about this news story.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
5.59297599 × 10^18 hogsheads 3.52357487 × 10^20 US gallons 1.33381818 × 10^21 litres
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"Never mind the fact that SI units actually work in a sane, base 10 oriented way..."
Yeah, but that only matters to sane people...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Fox News will believe that scientists can measure the size of the ocean from satellite data, but start talking about temperatures and all bets are off!
is whether they calculated the mean depth by assuming the oceans are flat with varying depth, or assuming it is spherical.
Assume spherical oceans of uniform density.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Of course, now that people will be able to fish for oil right off the pier, shouldn't oil prices go down?
BTW - 640g people should be enough for everyone.
That's not insightful, that's nonsense. It's just "look what the stupid treehuggers have forced us into, hurting their own cause with their idiocy" strawman baloney. If you look at a map of the oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico like this one, you can see that the area is pretty well saturated with rigs. This rig was so far out simply because they're following the oil further and further out to sea. So, please stop spreading lies implying that this is all somehow the fault of stupid hippies who forced the poor defenseless oil companies to drill in unsafe locations.
http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/depthsoundersh_secb.htm
In past times, ascertaining the water depth involved a difficult process called "sounding," which was done by throwing a weighted line over the side in an attempt to find the bottom. This line, called a "lead line" was knotted in increments that allowed the user to measure the water's depth in feet or more commonly, in "fathoms" a nautical unit of measure equal to 6 feet. Using a lead line from a moving vessel was of course problematic, and subject to inaccuracies. The user had to stand on the bow of the ship or boat and toss the line, wait until the lead weight hit the bottom, and then haul in the line and count the number of knots that were submerged. All the while the vessel was still moving and the bottom contour could, of course, have already changed by the time the sounder called out the depth to the captain.
Today's electronic depth sounders have changed all of this. Depth sounders provide instant and continuously updated readings of the water depth as a vessel speeds along. Depth sounders work by the principle of "sonar." A sound signal is emitted from the bottom of the hull and this signal travels through the water until it reaches the bottom and then bounces back, to be picked up by the depth sounder's receiver. Since sound waves travel at a known rate, the depth can be determined by calculating the amount of time it takes for the sound waves to hit the bottom and return to the vessel. This is all done automatically and instantaneously by the instrument.
So it was called sounding before we had sonar, and it's just a coincidence that the term "sound" is involved.
Except that there isn't really any benefit to using SI over Imperial measurements.
Yes there is.
Can you tell me how many cubic inches are in a cubic mile without asking Google?
The main point of the SI measurements is not to use different units like the meter and the kilogram it's to use a decimal system.
What a pity they weren't forced to have some sort of fail-safe system that actually worked.
Or to put it another way for all the absolute-free-marketers: this oil spill sure ain't providing profits to the shareholders.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
+1, insightful. Poster has demonstrated the use of base units, not derived units, and normalizing the scientific notation.
Folks who find the original post more interesting than the typical Slashdot discussion that followed might be interested in this recent work: Pressure-temperature Phase Diagram of the Earth
It discusses the possible range of "life as we know it" in the deep lithosphere.
Credo sim. - I think I am.
That's 640 billion metric people.
clearly not mods who moderate me "troll". lol.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Agreed. But no doubt at some point there was a board meeting, and the risk was deemed acceptable by those in control. Given the cap of 75m on damages by US law (obama trying to over-ride in this instance), it was a bit of a no-brainer $$$ wise. Upside = billions. Downside = 75m. No contest.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
those are metric billions
The mass of the average American does skew the numbers a tad higher than otherwise would be predicted.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Sounds like some kind of fail to me. Then I see the people who viewed this also viewed "Democrats history of deceit" or something like that and I knew that yes, it really is a fail.
Oh yes, I forgot about the "Corporations get a free pass for their bad decisions, and the government should be blamed, as long as they can show they were trying to make a profit" excuse.
Perhaps BP would have been better off investing its money in keyboardless locked-down netbooks? Or genetically engineered soybeans? Or a whole host of other activities that are profitable but don't risk destroying significant parts of the ecosystem?
Hey, I've an idea: maybe BP could invest in this "alternative fuels" thingie. It would have the added benefit that their ads would suddenly become truthful!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If this is true, doesn't it mean the predicted ocean rises will all be considerably out?
Most people are taught that the ocean levels rise due to melting ice caps but thermal expansion of water is behind at least half of the predicted rise in ocean level.
If there's less water in the ocean, there'll be a smaller expansion.
[citation needed]
I grew up with a boat, and our "sounder" was sonar. There's a reason why it's called a sounder...
And the reason is not because you'd use a sonar today: "Sounding generally refers to a mechanism of probing the environment by sending out some kind of stimulus. The term derives from the ancient practice of determining the depth of water (making a sounding) by feeding out a line with a weight at the end." From Wikipedia
I was a sonar operator on a frigate in the Navy, and we used a "freesinking" thermometer to measure temperature distribution in the ocean, this was called "sounding". We did it to calculate the range and depth at which we would be able to detect a submarine by sonar, a process which is not called "sounding".
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Never mind that! It's probably coming from those same global warming eggheads! I demand an investigation of these "oceanographers"! Someone hack their email server now!
(sarcasm)
Someone had to do it.
Lucky for you, although half that number also have no idea what a kilometre is, they also have no idea about this news story.
That's 3.2 billions. There aren't that many Americans in the world. You need to get out more.
I don't trust any of them, but sometimes at least their sources check out. With Fox, there isn't even that decency.
Do you do regular fact checks on them, CNN, MSNBC, etc, and compare? What's your source? Making a wild claim out of the blue never helps a cause (even if it's about Fox news).
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
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.
Sure, as long as they don't collect info on open wifi hot spots as they do it they shouldn't get in trouble...
I'm imagining a fleet of small boats with the Google logo on the sides crisscrossing the oceans of the earth mapping the ocean floor.
Wow the metric system has a unit of measure for everything or did you mean 640 centipeople?
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
To have its nature and import properly expressible, comprehensible, and accessible to the layman, the universe first had to, from the ashes of deads stars over billions and billions of years, invent Carl Sagan.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1658118&cid=32272368
Dude, you need to go back to primary school.
A cube with a side of one million kilometres would have a volume of 1 quintillion cubic kilometres.
I never watch MSNBC, and I do fact check CNN, with decent results. Typically I check through the scholarly databases or google scholar. Or in some cases, I can check a fact simply by testing it.
FOX posts a lot of interesting bullshit, the problem is that it all tends to be bullshit. MSNBC doesn't post anything worth checking or even watching, so I don't bother. FOX however always either misreads its source exaggerates, or flat out fucking lies. It is not a wild claim, and it is not out of the blue.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
"A big enough box could hold the world" -- Carl Sandburg
Where's your mom when we need her?
Bow-ties are cool.
Then modern society comes to a screeching halt. Individuals don't have the ability to take on large projects, like mass-producing almost anything.
Even the Soviets had corporations; they were simply all owned and overseen by the government. And that didn't work out too well for them anyway.
The solution isn't getting rid of corporations, it's having reasonable but effective government regulation of corporations, especially ones where people die or the environment gets trashed if they screw up. However, this requires an effective government, not one where the regulators don't bother to regulate, but instead sit around and surf porn for 8 hours/day.
This model works well in Europe, where they have strong industries but also strong regulation to prevent catastrophes like this, and regulators aren't looking at porn all day. I propose we outsource all our governmental duties to the Europeans, since we obviously can't do it ourselves properly.
I like it
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I never watch MSNBC, and I do fact check CNN, with decent results. Typically I check through the scholarly databases or google scholar. Or in some cases, I can check a fact simply by testing it.
FOX posts a lot of interesting bullshit, the problem is that it all tends to be bullshit. MSNBC doesn't post anything worth checking or even watching, so I don't bother. FOX however always either misreads its source exaggerates, or flat out fucking lies. It is not a wild claim, and it is not out of the blue.
I never said Fox lying/misguiding was out of the blue, just the claim that they're far more errant than all of the other TV news networks. Being a popular thing to bash Fox, I am skeptical on how accurate this claim is. I know, I see debunks, reports of their false reporting, etc. I don't doubt those. I've seen it myself. However, I've seen some of the same with CNN, CNBC, ABC, and let's not even mention MSNBC.
While Fox give themselves a pass many hours of the day during their opinion shows intermixed in between during popular hours, I'm speaking only of their claimed "actual news" hours.
Until I see a long-term in-depth study, or at least something well logged, of what networks are more accurate than others, I won't buy any claim that one network is far worse at it than the other, especially one made by a random /.er claiming to fact-check everything all the news networks say.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
As you have no idea of what you are talking about, i will make it simple.
A cube with a side of one meter has one cubic meter
therefore a cube with a side of one million kilometers has the volume of one million cubic kilometers
Wrong. A cube with the side of one million kilometers would have the volume of (one million km)^3 = (one million)^3 km^3 = one quintillion km^3 = one quintillion cubic kilometers.
One million cubic kilometers is the volume of one million cubes with side length 1 km each. From one million such cubes you cannot build a cube with a side length of one million km.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Upside = billions. Downside = 75m. No contest.
... I did not know that. How utterly insane - did someone at FEMA go "Yeah no corporate-induced crisis is ever gonna cost more than $75m to clean up..."? yeesh.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Radar??? How is RADAR useful for measuring ocean volume??? The idiot author must have meant active SONAR right? Science reporting by the mainstream media is appalling. They are good at gossip and scandals and political correct-itudes but horrible at science. And they don't even known it.
There's easily 3.2 billion people in the world who have no idea what a mile or a kilometre is.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The interesting thing about this piece of information is that if the entire ocean were to be placed into a sphere, it would only have a radius of about 424 miles. This seems pretty small when you think about the size of the ocean.
... did someone at FEMA go "Yeah no corporate-induced crisis is ever gonna cost more than $75m to clean up..."?
Probably not. The way the US Congress usually works is: Proposed laws and regulations are formulated by committees that consist mostly of lobbyists paid by the interested corporations. The bills are submitted to the staff of a "friendly" Congressperson, and cursorily examined for glaring problems. Then they go to Congress, whose members may cursorily scan them, but more often they just read the summary. Sometimes, as with /., they don't even do that, but rely on what their staff and the lobbyists tell them verbally. They vote on the bill, and if it passes (and is signed by the President), it's published. What it means is then determined by the courts if necessary. But the typical bill, which usually has hundreds or thousands of pages, isn't fully read and understood by anyone. And the only ones with any detailed knowledge of its contents are usually the lobbyists, who have taken care to include language like the things we're discussing here.
When people discover what has been hidden in the hundreds of pages of a law, the Congress folks are usually as surprised as the rest of us. But chances are the sponsors of the bill will favor this sort of clause, since they were chosen as sponsors with the knowledge that they are friendly toward the industries affected by the law.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.