The problem with that was, 1. there are better sources of water (the oort cloud) and 2. they aren't stuck in an gravity well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth#Aster...

I have a mental image of a gigantic cosmic being grabbing the Earth, wiping off the wet stuff with a rag, and bowling it at Proxima Centauri.

https://billiards.colostate.edu/bd_articles/2013/june13.pdf

>So, based on the data, just how smooth is a CB? And how does this smoothness compare to the surface of the Earth? The highest point on earth is Mount Everest, which is about 29,000 feet above sea level; and the lowest point (in the earth’s crust) is Mariana’s Trench, which is about 36,000 feet below sea level. The larger number (36,000 feet) corresponds to about 1700 parts per million (0.17%) as compared to the average radius of the Earth (about 4000 miles). The largest peak or trench for all of the balls I tested was about 3 microns (for the Elephant Practice Ball). This corresponds to about 100 parts per million (0.01%) as compared to the radius of a pool ball (1 1/8 inch). Therefore, it would appear that a pool ball (even the worst one tested) is much smoother than the Earth would be if it were shrunk down to the size of a pool ball. However, the Earth is actually much smoother than the numbers imply over most of its surface. A 1x1 millimeter area on a pool ball (the physical size of the images) corresponds to about a 140x140 mile area on the Earth. Such a small area certainly doesn’t include things like Mount Everest and Mariana’s Trench in the same locale. And in many places, especially places like Louisiana, where I grew up, the Earth’s surface is very flat and smooth over this area size. Therefore, much of the Earth’s surface would be much smoother than a pool ball if it were shrunk down to the same size.

Adding in how far of a drive is it to X place or how far of a walk is it, is also fun.

The volume of all water is 1,386,000,000 km^3, which is then 1.386e+21 liters, or right about the same number of kilograms.

The mass of Earth is about 5.972e+24 kg. So the percent fraction by mass is 0.0232%.

A "drop" is typically estimated at 1/20th of one mL, which is then 0.05 grams. We can estimate the mass of a small-ish bowling ball at 5kg, or 5000 grams. 0.05 / 5000 * 100 = 0.001%.

So it's an order of magnitude shy, but that's still closer than I expected! It's about 1 ml of beer on a bowling ball - a small splash. Or maybe a very large drop.

Earth as a whole has a density about 5.5x that of water.

Yeah, the image with the oceans being dry is wow-inducing... On further thought, of course it'd be very close a sphere, because gravity forces it to be. A sphere where e.g. a slice of it is water (imagine a clementine with one of its segments being water) would be very wobbly if even possible at all..

I do wonder if the OP includes water locked away in rocks though, to my understanding the majority of the water is in the mantle and not even the oceans, but my source is my butt for that one

It's a ball of iron covered with rocks (i.e. metal oxides) cover with water (i.e. hydrogen oxide).

A ball of iron covered with a ball of rocks is a more fair statement though, and I'd agree with that. It's just that center ball isn't most of what makes up the Earth (by any measure).

Everything up to and including the mantle is either iron or has a lot of iron. But to your point the mantle also has a lot of silica. So I guess it depends on your definition of "mostly".

By mass, iron (32.1%) is still a minority constituent of the Earth.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...>

lol it's funny when you put it that way

Understandably, since, in this case, surface area is more intuitively captured by our brains than volume.

Also because we are very small. The amount of water, from our perspective, makes it look like a water planet.