Salam i know thatbthis question should proberbly be posted in general knowledge, but i am doing it here. I wasnt able to get the right information so if someone could help me.
How much of the earth is under water & how much is land.... 70 : 30....? Can someone tell me the EXACT proportion.
I'm not sure how this information relates to your Quran link but according to worldatlas.com the earth's measurements are:
Surface Area of the Planet (510,066,000 sq km) Land Area on the Planet (148,647,000 sq km) 29.1% Ocean Area (335,258,000 sq km) Total Water Area (361,419,000 sq km) 70.9% Type of Water (97% salt), (3% fresh)
So just about 71% of the Earth's surface is under water and 29% is land area.
Posts: 9192 | Location: Atlanta, GA, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Originally posted by Fourbrick2: Depends whether the tide is in or not.
I know you're only kidding, but that raises a question for me. I'm no expert on this subject.
When the tide is high in one part of the ocean doesn't it have to be low tide on the opposite end? And, is land that is covered with ice considered land or water?
The water measurements given above by Georgia give the MEAN amount of land and water. Yes, when the tide is high in one part of the ocean then it is low on the other side, due to exertion of the pull of gravity from the moon.
Land that is covered with ice (e.g. Antarctica) is not considered to be water, but the Arctic which is frozen sea water is.
Greenland is almost completely covered by ice. It is regarded as the largest island in the world. Antarctica is also covered in ice. An area in which the water is in a bay (i.e. not land) and frozen year-round are called an Ice Shelf. I think Antarctica has 3. As a contrast to this, consider the Arctic waters. There is no land at the "top" of the world. The ice that permanently exists there is floating, and called an Ice Pack. It does not stay stationary, however, and very slowly moves and rotates around the geographic North Pole.
While I think you are right about the tides, in a general sense, I do not know that as a fact.
Posts: 16164 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
A map of the Arctic Circle, showing the floating ice pack, in white - This also shows the area of Greenland that is covered by ice. The light green is ice covered land, the dark green is open coastal land. According to this map, and information (below) from the CIA, it is theoretically possible to walk from Canada to Russia and from both of those to Greenland during winter. ---- Terrain of the Artic Ocean, from the CIA World Factbook - central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that, on average, is about 3 meters thick, although pressure ridges may be three times that thickness; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight-line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonosov Ridge)
