Here is a very cool infographic of the heights and depths you find on this planet, all to scale. Just start at the top and scroll down; there are a lot of really cool facts included.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the well that’s been spewing oil in to the Gulf of Mexico for the last fifty or so days is also included. It actually gives you a good sense of the scale of the thing, and why dealing with it is not as simple as “just put a cap on it.” I also hadn’t realized just how far they’d drilled down. It’s pretty impressive.
And for extra added awesome, Denver’s on the graphic too!
4 replies on “The heights and depths of Planet Earth”
Neat, but a couple of nitpicks:
They portray the top of the Grand Canyon at sea level. Not true!
The graphic should include the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which drilled down to 40,230ft in 1989.
I must be going blind. I don’t see the top of the Grand Canyon on the thing…
Including that well would have been pretty cool, though.
Aha, I found it. Yeah, I’m not sure why they did that either. Because it’s a bit misleading. The Grand Canyon does get up to 6000 feet deep at its grandest, but the rim is definitely way above sea level – it’s on the Colorado Plateau, after all. So technically, they got the maximum depth right, but they should probably have put it from between 7000 and 1000 feet above sea level or so. Poo. :-/
Also, if they add the Borehole, they need to add a chamber beneath it, from where the sounds of tortured souls were captured on microphone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax