Jason E. Andersen

Bonus Fun Fact: About 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. If this is new for you, hooray! However, for those of you that remember learning this from middle school, it might be a bit underwhelming. Think about it though, almost three-quarters of the planet covered by water? I feel like that’s pretty cool.

But the real, mind-blowing thing about this is the volume that water occupies. Earlier this week, I came across the following image, which amazed and confused me.

The big blue sphere represents all the water on (and in) the Earth, the little sphere next to it is fresh water (most of the Earth’s water is salt water in the oceans after all), and the third, tiny sphere (hovering over Georgia) is the fresh water in lakes and rivers. Now, compare those watery spheres to the big ball of rock that is the Earth, and it really puts things in perspective. I can’t get my mind around how shallow the oceans are compared to the bulk of the planet. Crazy!

You can read more details about the Earth’s water from our pals at the US Geological Survey Water Science School.

Bonus Bonus Fun Fact: The average depth of the world’s oceans is about 12,100 feet. That’s unfathomably deep (ha!) to me but, on a planetary scale, they’re mere puddles.