I blame global warming.

It would be interesting to see a similar for all the land above sea level. Which sphere would've bigger and by how much?

typo... would *be bigger

Makes me thirsty.

Average depth of oceans: 3790m
Average height of land above sea level: 840m

The water sphere would be about 4.5 times bigger, not including lakes and rivers.

Oops, not quite right... considering that approximately 2/3 of Earth's surface is ocean, the water sphere may be even larger in comparison.

Wiki says 71% of earth's surface is water, so...
Avg height/depth * approx percentage of earth's surface

Oceans: 3790 * .7 = 2653
Land: 840 * .3 = 252

I'd like to see pretty much the same thing: a saltwater sphere and a freshwater sphere. :-)

Freshwater sphere would just be a spec next to the saltwater sphere wouldn't it?

How about the even tinier black speck which is all the oil left on this planet...

spyman: Ha ha, even if it's a saltwater sphere, I'm surprised at how large it is.

Wow... all the water on the Earth would make a ball considerably smaller than the Earth? Stop the presses!

Seriously, though, what thoughts is this meant to provoke? All it shows is that if you put an incomprehensively big thing next to an even larger thing it will look small. Why not shove Jupiter behind it and make it look even smaller? Or measure it's radius in units of london double decker buses and make it look big? All are equally pointless.

It may be pointless to you, but that doesn't mean others do not get something from it.

For myself, it reminded me how thin a layer life is on earth. We think of the oceans being very deep and how even the life that lives at the rifts so far down seem so far off. And yet the reality is that a few miles of water on the surface is hardly anything compared to the bulk of the earth. And similarly the layer of gasses around the earth are similarly thing. It makes me wonder of which there is more, air or water?

I was actually at the Pacific coast this weekend with my wife and looked out over the ocean thinking how massive it was. And then I came home and saw this thread. I enjoy seeing things from different viewpoints, especially when the viewpoints give you very opposite feelings.

...similarly thin, not thing, sorry.

+1 Alderian.

It's interesting because it's a unique perspective. There is no agenda - it's just meant to be illustrative and educational, it is after all from the USGS.

@ Thucy

I am happy that there is no agenda, or at least none that I can see. I also can agree that it's a unique perspective (I've not seen it before, anyway). But what I can't see is how it is educational or what it illustrates. If anything it gives a misleading impression of how much water exists by placing it in a perspective that none of us have any great experience or feel for. In many ways it reminds me of the graphical representation of statistics you find in the worst of America's political adds. Not strictly speaking a lie, but not really the truth either.

I think it is very interesting, because it is an accurate physical representation. It answers the question "how much water is on earth" better than any number. I don't think it necessarily leads us to believe there is a lot or a little, it just shows us how much there is. I wasn't very surprised by its size

Octavious: Ha ha, I think the worst of U. S. political ads are in fact blatant lies.

If I were a giant alien, I'd take a wiz on the ball of water, just to fuck with you all before I flew off in my spaceship to Planet Garganzola...

@ Thucy

"It answers the question "how much water is on earth" better than any number"

Does it, though? Does the answer "a big raindrop about the size of France and Germany/ the Gulf of Mexico/ a small moon" mean anything to you? Because it means absolutely nothing to me.

@ JECE

Ah, the blatent lies aren't so bad. They're easy to spot and can be ignored by voters with little effort.

The image answers the question "how much of the world is made of water?" We could just give a number or a ratio, but we would still need to visualise that number to get a sense of it, which is exactly what the image helps us to do.
Some look at the image and think "wow is that all?", while others think "really? As much as that?" It gives us some perspective. If there were other planets in our solar system which had substatial amounts of water then the image would be even more interesting because we could then compare.

... just to clarify the above. It's not how much water there is in absolute terms which is interesting, but how much water there is in comparison to the rest of the world.

"Does it, though? Does the answer "a big raindrop about the size of France and Germany/ the Gulf of Mexico/ a small moon" mean anything to you? Because it means absolutely nothing to me."

Really? You must not look at maps much.

Ok then, put it this way. The human experience of spheres, even at human sizes, is pretty limited. We are quite good at cubes and cuboids, and can estimate how many dice, say, will fit in a box with little difficulty. Estimating how many golf balls will fit in a basket ball, on the other hand, is quite tricky.

If we then take that tricky sphere to orders of magnitude over which we have only the vaguest feel for then our ability to get anything meaningful from it wittles away to next to nothing. We see a big ball of water next to a much bigger ball of rock. How many Mississippi Rivers is that worth? How many Lake Victorias, perhaps? How many baths? How many pint glasses even? We can't do it. There is no way for us to convert it into anything with which we are familiar with because giant floating balls are so far removed from our experience.

It is a pretty picture, but that is all it is.

I don't think so. I know how far 860 miles is, so a sphere of this size does have meaning to me.

If you really think humans can only understand things that they have experienced outside the abstract, then I appeal to my own visualization. The state of Texas where I live is about 860 miles wide, and I have driven the distance in one go. If I imagine myself driving through the center of a sphere of water of that size, that means something to me. It doesn't for you apparently, sorry? I guess?

I don't know how long a million years is and yet we talk about that with great urgency sometimes. I'm afraid I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Visualizations larger than a certain scale aren't useful, or what? Because I know of one that made good sense. It was the "imagine the earth is this basketball" image, with other balls at appropriate sizes and distances representing the members of our solar system. How is something like this not helpful?