Tag: Earth

What percentage of the earth’s water is tied up in the atmosphere (clouds)?

Great question and I don’t know. But this graphic will help us understand together:

Here you can see that there’s not much water on Earth. Basically the earth has high and low areas. The low areas have water. To us the oceans seem deep – 7 miles, maybe more, but overall, compared to the size of the planet, it’s really not much water. We can also see from the image above that we really don’t have a lot of air.

That being said, common sense tells us that not all the water is in the atmosphere. Only some, otherwise we’d have no lakes, rivers or ocean! So I’m going to guess – that’s scientifically called an educated guess, not a large percentage of Earth’s water is tied up in the atmosphere.

Now we could research this more with some Google searches, but my answer is just about common sense. I don’t think that much of our total water is in our atmosphere. There’s some, but we still need some left over to fill the lakes, rivers and oceans too.

 

Why do aliens always have to look and have similar biology to us?

Exactly! To date, no life has been found on any other planet or meteor. We would really like to find life elsewhere, and the most likely candidates within reach would be the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Beyond that you have to go interstellar. Since it would take hundreds or even thousands of years to reach even the nearest stars at the fastest speed we’ve ever achieved in space, interstellar travel is unlikely now or in the future.

Put away Star Trek and Star Wars. Aliens are not visiting us and we are not going to visit them, whatever they may look like.

What would happen to the rest of the planets if Uranus changed places with Mars and Pluto swapped with Jupiter?

On this planet there would be total chaos in the classroom. Books would have to be rewritten.

Scientists would be busy figuring out how this happened when it should not be able to happen. It would be on the nightly news with Lester Holt.

Donald Trump would blame it on Democrats.

Immediately on Earth we would see no change except in conspiracy theories.

Why do we associate the color green with the earth even though 75% of the earth is water (blue)?

Beats me. I always hear it’s called the blue planet. It looks that way because most of our planet is covered with the ocean. Then there’s the clouds, which look white from space.

Perhaps you’re confusing the term “Green Earth” often associated with Earth Day. From space, earth is blue and white.

The Moon is not as Close as you Think!

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could all fit in the gap between the Earth and our Moon with about 4,990 miles to spare

Think of Earth as a basketball and the moon like a tennis ball. How far would you have to place them apart to approximate the distance between the Earth and Moon? Five feet? Ten feet? Twenty feet? Nope! Further even then that! A tennis ball would then have to be about 24 feet from the basketball to be of the proper scale. Farther than most people visualize.

This is how it looks (See image). Kind of surprising. The moon looks bigger to us than that, doesn’t it? Well, no it doesn’t. Our minds eye just makes it look bigger. Hold your thumb out at arms length. The tip of your thumb at that distance more than covers the moon. Still, the moon is the biggest thing in the night sky, and it really stands out much brighter and bigger than all the stars, relatively.

Surprisingly, people really do think the Moon is closer to the Earth than it is. You can see from the photo taking a “mere trip to the Moon” is no easy task!

Here’s a statistic for you! Think how big Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the gas giants, are in relationship to our tiny Earth.

Yet our Moon is so far from Earth that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could all fit in the gap with about 4,990 miles to spare (using the average Earth-moon distance of 238,555 miles).

Solar_System_3

How Big does a Moon Have to Be?

Not very big! It would just have to be natural. Not made by man! And it wouldn’t have to be there for very long either. Just long enough for it to be in orbit.

The astronomical community doesn’t have a definition for moon other than it has to be a natural object. Thus captured asteroids can be moons. It’s even possible for a moon to have a moon!

Mars has two moons, neither of which are large enough to be round. Objects in space get round due to their own gravity. The first image above is Deimos and the second is Phobos, the Martian Moons. Deimos (top) is the smallest. It has a mean radius of 3.9 miles.