Earth: Peak to Depth
By Barry Ritholtz - January 4th, 2012, 5:00AM
Madness!
click for ginormous graphic
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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
January 4th, 2012 at 6:12 am
An interesting fact:
Throughout the incredibly diverse range of environments portrayed above,
there is no sterile place;
nowhere not teeming with various life forms well suited to their particular microcosm.
This bodes well for the search for life on other worlds…
January 4th, 2012 at 10:24 am
Ob. XKCD about scale:
depth – https://www.xkcd.com/485/
height – https://www.xkcd.com/482/
January 4th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
On a related note, the blog posting:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/12/how-much-dam-energy-can-we-get/
postulated that the solar energy budget of the earth involved 23% of the incoming power being devoted to the evaporation of water. Water which must come down as rain. Give the water capacity of the atmosphere, Dr. Murphy roughly estimated the potential energy of hydroelectric power as being an average of 2km above the earth and that the maximum energy generating capacity of hydroelectric power in the world was 25TW – but of course this did not reflect the economic, environmental or even physical practicality of the damning of the world. This would, in his estimation reduce “[f]or technical feasibility, these same sources estimate 1.6–2.3 TW globally. Economic feasibility (in today’s economic climate) drops this to 1.0–1.4 TW.”
Thus, as a 10% potential contributor for the current world energy budget of approx. 13 TW this would drop the search for alternative energy into the “niche” category or possibly the potent contributor to future energy supplies.
As a corrective for enthusiast’s estimates of alternative energy – I find his blog most helpful.
January 7th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
For a different perspective, assume the earth were one meter in diameter. Calculate the average ocean depth on the model earth. Calculate how far above and below the surface of the model earth the highest and lowest points would extend. All are less than one millimeter.