What the Earth would Look Like Without Water: Facts

Story:

What the Earth would Look Like Without Water.

Other Versions

1. Ever wondered what Earth looks like without water? It looks lumpy.

2. 3D model of the Earth without water in the Oceans.

Analysis:

An animated picture in the form of GIF image and also video (shown in this article) has been shared widely online in the last few days and went viral. The weird, lumpy, potato-shaped Earth is said to be showing how the planet would look like without water. The GIF image of Earth is pretty cool, but what is claimed is not a fact.

As the science writer Phil Plait pointed on slate.com, the animated 3D model of rotating globe actually depicts the Earth’s Geoid — which is a way of describing Earth’s gravitational field. The image is taken from a project involving MATLAB script for 3D visualizing geodata on a rotating globe. To get an idea as to how the Earth would like without water, you can refer to the picture below, which is from a U.S. Geological Survey USGS project on how much water is on Earth. The largest blue color sphere over western U.S. represents all the water on Earth, the next bigger sphere represents fresh liquid water in the ground, lakes, swamps and rivers, and the smallest sphere represents fresh-water lakes and rivers.

Picture of What the Earth would Look Like Without Water — What the Earth would Look Like Without Water

So the stories saying the GIF image in question shows what our Earth would look like without water are hoaxes, it only depicts the Earth’s Geoid; a way of describing Earth’s gravitational field.