Depth of the Ocean, Scaled to Human Size

This is equally impressive: the depth of the ocean scaled in proportion to its width -

http://i.imgur.com/1oLog.png

Credit to Redditor jjs774 (http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/b3p8g/reddit_last_week_we_saw_the_depth_of_the_ocean/)

Screw outer space! Lets use the ocean as man's next uncharted frontier.

Minnesotastan- that curve with the orbit-hight of ISS included is astounding. Okay- I knew already that the space station barely keeps it's solar-wings only just above the mainpart of the atmosphere. But to see this kind of distances and to realise how much problems we have to scale those is pretty mindboggling.

And then to think that lots of us still believe we humans by now have become the Masters of our environment... Man look at those distances and what we can do with them and you realise that we actually haven't yet learned to swim and that we haven't really learned to fly.....!

Whoa, from the way the image was cropped, I was first thinking to myself, OK, the ocean is as deep as the empire state building is tall. That's pretty deep, no doubt, but I was under the impression that it was a bit deeper than that.

Then I clicked on the entire image. Oh, yeah, it's more than 25 times as deep as the Empire State building is tall. That's...well...that's extremely deep. My ears hurt just thinking about it. *POP*

Wow. Thanks for the nightmares.

Seeing the ocean in person makes me feel insignificant. This graphic produces a similar effect.

And really, the whole ocean is a tiny, infinitesimally small speck in the universe.

Makes you feel pretty small, doesn't it?

Max has got a good point, but I think it's actually very difficult to explore the deep ocean because of the pressures involved.

I am all for pointing a good focus on the exploration of the deep. From a cost/return perspective, the ocean is FAR more lucrative than space. Don't get me wrong, I want a much greater effort put forth into space as well, but, let's face it, the ocean is a lot more feasible for manned exploration at this point in time.

The pressures involved are a problem, yes, but we've already developed and are even currently using the technology to overcome that. I mean, for crying out loud, we set people down in the Challenge Deep back in 1960!

Microbes swimming in a layer of dew, and a pixel at 3.6 billion miles:

Pale Blue Dot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot