Starship Asterisk*

Today's illustration on APOD depicting the amount of water on Earth has been circulating on the web with a relatively high profile over the past week or so. Have you seen it before? We would be grateful if you would indicate yes or no in the above poll. Although only an informal poll, we are curious to better understand the effect of previous recent exposure on the popularity of specific APODs. Comments are also welcome below. Thanks for any help you can be!

The image is again posted here for clarity: - RJN for APOD

Saw it the day before on Gizmodo Australia.
Replete with all the dumb comments that their comment fields attract.
Much better pic here though

Hi, I've seen it before, but not this week. There's one about the atmosphere too, it's even scarier! We have to look after this place...

SteveWalkey1 wrote:Hi, I've seen it before, but not this week. There's one about the atmosphere too, it's even scarier! We have to look after this place...

Can someone post a link with this picture with atmosphere I've never seen these pictures before

This, then, is a picture of God: Since that small blue marble is what creates life on this planet.

I've not seen this exact image, but here is a similar one (nicer too, IMHO, although the ocean floor is less well shown):

saw it on first on
http://science.memebase.com/

SteveWalkey1 wrote:Hi, I've seen it before, but not this week. There's one about the atmosphere too, it's even scarier! We have to look after this place...

i hadn't seen it before , I love it , I'd also like to see the atmosphere one as well , please post a link .

junpumanpan wrote:

SteveWalkey1 wrote:Hi, I've seen it before, but not this week. There's one about the atmosphere too, it's even scarier! We have to look after this place...

i hadn't seen it before , I love it , I'd also like to see the atmosphere one as well , please post a link .

I found a link after some googline: http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/imag ... =690550330

Similar version seen last week for the first time in a presentation by Mark Schrader of the Ocean Watch organization.

heng wrote:saw it on first on
http://science.memebase.com/

haha, this, I too saw it first on there around a week ago.

Saw it first on the Earth Science picture of the day facebook page

First saw this last week on USGS website (linked from their facebook page): http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html USGS credits Jack Cook of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution same as APOD.

I saw it first here at S.A.*!
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=28486

May 8 CNN Lightyears blog

I saw it at Phil Plait's talk in Boulder, CO on May 12, 2012.

This morning on the Weather Channel during their silly WUWA (Wake Up With Al) show.
By the way, I don't believe it. There doesn't appear to be enough matter there to even "paint" the oceans back in place.

Guest wrote:

junpumanpan wrote:

SteveWalkey1 wrote:Hi, I've seen it before, but not this week. There's one about the atmosphere too, it's even scarier! We have to look after this place...

i hadn't seen it before , I love it , I'd also like to see the atmosphere one as well , please post a link .

I found a link after some googline: http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/imag ... =690550330

Dude , that is so cool , thank you .

bellzerr wrote:... By the way, I don't believe it. There doesn't appear to be enough matter there to even "paint" the oceans back in place.

Luckily, science doesn't require belief. All you have to do is gather up some commonly available facts and perform the calculations yourself.

Rob

I saw it many months ago. The oceans (mass 1.430E21 kg) fill a ball of 698.901 km radius, adding water (clouds and vapour) in atmosphere makes it 698.022 km, and adding icecaps, groundwater, lakes, rivers, makes it 705.022 km radius. (Data from from "Patient Earth", John Harte and Robert H Socolow, 1971, Holt Rinehart and Winston Inc.
The dry atmosphere (mass 5.12E18 kg) would take up 981.433 km sphere if at atmospheric pressure.

Same infographic, different picture. It was in a french magazine "Science & vie" and the meaning was the same.

I find XKCD's Lakes and Oceans is good for understanding the depth of something like Mariana Trench because it shows both the standard depth graph as well as an accurate horizontal scale inset. It's also very interesting for a number of other reasons!

I'm the author of a very similar image, which won a 'Visions of Science' award in 2003. I made three versions because having direct experience of the areas depicted (e.g. knowing what it's like to drive from Northern France to Southern Italy) helps with the sense of scale.



I also made a version which shows the volume of whole atmosphere at sea-level density:



There's 5,140 trillion tonnes of air in the atmosphere, but most of it is very close to the surface. At 5.6 km above the ground (about half the height of an airliner) half of the atmosphere is beneath you.

I call this type of image 'concrete visualisation', a term I have tried to explain here: http://adamnieman.posterous.com/what-is ... ualisation

Concrete visualisation can work well in astronomy. In this example I have tried to get a feel for the surface area of the Moon by mapping a familiar area onto it. You can see the relative sizes of the Earth and the Moon in the image on the right.



I'd be delighted if APOD wanted to feature one of my 'All the air' images, or the surface area of the Moon image. What do you say?

@adamnieman

No, I've never seen it (though I've seen a few similar images that used shapes other than spheres to illustrate the idea.

I have never seen this image before. It's fascinating, as are the others posted here. Thanks.