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it should come as no surprise to you
that most of the earth's surface is
covered by water this is a simple fact
that we've all learned about since our
earliest memories in school
but you probably will still be surprised
by the absolute
sheer scale of the biggest part of our
ocean
the pacific to say that the pacific
ocean is
huge would be an equally huge
understatement the pacific ocean
is colossal so let's begin by talking
about
this fact imagine that you're on a boat
at approximately these coordinates
you're in the pacific ocean just
slightly off the coast of chile and peru
in south america then
imagine you got in a submarine submerged
all the way to the bottom of the ocean
and then drilled all the way through the
earth out to the other side of the world
and came up on the other side
after doing all of that you would still
find yourself
inside of the pacific ocean specifically
the gulf of tonkin
just off the coast of vietnam and china
the pacific ocean
is so massive that it contains several
of its own
antipodes or spots on the opposite side
of the world that remain
in the same ocean but we're just getting
started here
there are parts of the pacific ocean
that stretch across more than half of
the planet's surface
but the longest continuous stretch of
water spans between the islands of
indonesia and the coast of colombia this
stretch is nearly 19
800 kilometers long this is such a huge
distance you could fit the entire
diameter of the moon between it
actually you could fit five moons in
this distance
and still have room left over zooming
out to this view of the pacific from
above on google maps can give you this
image
which gives the perception that it takes
up almost half of the planet
however this image is deceiving because
in reality you can never really see half
of the planet at the same time since the
earth is shaped like a sphere there's a
point where the planet begins curving
out from your field of view that's
called the horizon
and no matter how far away you get from
earth you're always going to be dealing
with a horizon that blocks viewing a
full half of the planet
in reality the pacific ocean takes up
approximately one
third of the planet's surface which is
still a highly significant amount
significant enough to produce a map like
this one here
you can see two separate ways to divide
the world's surface between two equal
hemispheres
most of us are probably more familiar
with the eastern and western hemispheric
view of the world but this view isn't
really based on anything other than the
british who decided that they were the
center of the world
back in the 19th century in this new
division the world is divided between
the water hemisphere and the land
hemisphere the two sides of the world
that contain the most water in the most
land the pacific takes up most of the
water hemisphere and in total
this entire half of the planet is 89
water 5 polar ice cap and only 6 percent
dry land if you were stranded in the
oceans on this side of the world
it might indeed be a while until you
ever discovered land
now with all that being said in purely
numerical form the pacific ocean
is 165.25 million square kilometers in
surface area
and that's a challenging number to
visualize so think about it this way
the surface area of every single
continent of land in the world combined
from north america
south america europe africa asia
australia
antarctica and even throwing in
greenland just for good measure
is only 148 million square kilometers
this means that you could fit every
single continent
in the world together inside of just the
pacific
and still have millions of square
kilometers left open
let's think about this another way
imagine the planet mars measure
out every single square kilometer across
the entire martian surface
every valley and canyon and crater now
let's pour the pacific ocean over mars
eventually you'll completely submerge
all of mars 145 million square
kilometers of surface area
in fact the pacific ocean is a whopping
20
million square kilometers larger than
the surface area of mars
and we've only started talking about the
surface area of the pacific
not yet its depth indeed the pacific
isn't just huge across it's also
huge below it's the deepest of any of
earth's oceans
the challenger deep in the marianas
trench is the deepest point in the world
that we're aware of so far
plunging nearly 11 kilometers beneath
the waves
and other trenches have points that
reach very similar depths the tonga
trench
philippine trench and the curl kamchatka
trench all
have spots over 10.3 kilometers deep
and the mean depth across the entire
pacific is over 4
000 meters the average depth in the
pacific
is over 2600 times deeper than the deep
end of an average american swimming pool
with all that size and all that depth
the pacific alone contains
710 million cubic kilometers worth of
water
which is roughly 50 percent of all the
world's oceanic water
all of this puts into perspective how
ridiculously
bold the ancient polynesian explorers
really were
they sailed out into an unknown and
uncharted ocean bigger than
all of the world's continents combined
bigger even than an entire planet
just in the hopes of discovering some
new islands
and discover they did the pacific is
home to over 25
000 distinct islands spread out across
almost
incomprehensible distances but already
by the year 1200 the polynesians have
reached virtually
all of them from their original starting
point back in taiwan
some of these islands continue to be
absurdly remote and difficult to get to
even today
let alone a thousand years ago the
pacific ocean is so
vast and so empty that it contains many
of the most remote and difficult to get
to
places in the world take honolulu and
hawaii for example
this is the most remote city with a
population over 100 thousand people
anywhere in the world because the
nearest other city of comparable or
greater size
is san francisco over 3 800 kilometers
away
about the same distance as new york city
is away from los angeles
the polynesians still found it over 700
years ago
easter island is arguably the most
remote inhabited island in the world
because it's over 2
000 kilometers away from the nearest
other piece of land and that piece of
land
happens to be pitcairn island which
itself is an absurdly remote hard to get
to
island in the middle of nowhere besides
pitcairn eastern island is over 2 600
kilometers away from the nearest town
with over 500 people
on the island of mangureva and it's over
3 500 kilometers away from the nearest
other continent
south america it's also home to the
world's most remote airport
since the nearest other airport is over
in the gambier islands 2600 kilometers
away and the nearest
major airport is in santiago over 3 700
kilometers away
comparatively not even the airport at
the south pole is as remote as the one
on easter island
since the nearest other airport to there
is just over 1300 kilometers away
still the polynesians may have
discovered it over 1200 years ago in
canoes
the polynesians were master discoverers
and explorers who honed their skills
over generations of navigators
it takes time and patience to learn how
to discover the islands across a
planet-sized ocean but there was only
one way to start just get in the boat
and begin the journey the beginning is
really the same for learning any new
skill so if there's a big personal goal
or passion project of your own that
you'd like to get started on
but you're uncertain about having the
skills required to do it
you should go hop in the boat and check
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