Re:Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core
by tlb on Thursday June 12, 2014 @10:14PM
(#7887144)
You dropped some zeros. A billion liters is a cube 100 meters on a side, more like a drop than an ocean.
Re:Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core
by pavement on Thursday June 12, 2014 @10:36PM
(#7887200)
Wait, you're right. I think I dropped about maybe 4 zeroes off the exponential notation. Strike the "billion" and make it like 10^11th or 10^12th power. Either way, I think the ratios still work.
Hypothetically, if it were a continuous shell of pure, fresh water encapsulating the entire inner mantle and core, and if it happened to be 200km thick, with an inner surface at 600 km deep (the shell's floor starts at a radius of 5,400 km) and an outer surface at 400 km deep (the shell's ceiling stops at a radius of 5,600 km), the intervening space could collect possibly a volume close to 76 billion liters of water.
Compare this to a hypothetical scenario, where our planet's rocky crust has a radius of 5,995 km, and is completely covered in one giant ocean of water 5 km deep (think Water World with Kevin Costner) for a total diameter of 12,000 km, this huge ubiquitous ocean would only contain 2 billion liters of water.
So, in a world of perfect spherical maximums, rounded to the nearest billions in liters, this subterranian zone could contain 38 times the water we currently observe on the surface of the earth.