The Ocean is Deep.... REALLY DEEP.

[ErikH]

http://i.imgur.com/m3ZxZ.jpg

[ErikH]

TO SCALE

[Europhyllia]

very good illustration

[ShAgMaN]

How can an anglerfish withstand 11K psi? I'm sure they covered this in Oceanography, but I can't remember.

[Kenya]

nice image! puts the ocean in perspective

[corruption]

I love pictures like this -- this one isn't ocean related, but similar breakdown of data:

http://mozy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/whatsapetabyte.gif

I enjoy this one immensely, because it helps people get into perspective what I do for a living -- data backup and retention. My infrastructure moves 16 petabytes of data per month -- almost as much data as google processes daily :)

-Justin

[swjim]

That's a really cool illustration.

[ErikH]

Justin I bet alot has changed since then! Every civilization must reach a pinnacle before falling, lol

[bjgf15]

How can an anglerfish withstand 11K psi? I'm sure they covered this in Oceanography, but I can't remember.

The tissue of a fish (or us for that matter) is mostly comprised of water and other similarily incompressable materials. Therfore no matter how deep you are, the pressure cannot crush a fish's tissue (at very deep depths, pressure can impact protein function... but that's only minor and many deep sea critters have alterantive proteins to compensate).

The problem lies with anything that has air pockets (ie. our lungs, ears etc). Since air is very compressable, these pockets quickly collapse and would kill you at relatively shallow depths.

Deep diving marine mammals have lungs designed to collapse and force all oxygen into the blood allowing them to stay down for extended periods (as well as many other adaptations).

[ErikH]

That is why I find octopi so amazing.