Astounding scientific breakthrough, The sun orbits the earth.

[Mechanical Menace]

bingo!

the earth is far more complicated than a feature-less rock floating in space.

Erm, it IS pretty much a featureless rock in space. If you scaled it down to the size of a person it would be amazingly smooth, the height difference between the deepest trench and highest mountain only being a small fraction of the depth of the ridges on your fingertips.

[SeanB]

I went out today, and in a woodland I saw a bear. He did not see me ( and I got a good look at the bear, so could see the differences between he and she) and, whils in the woods, he did stop and drop a load.

thus it is true, bears do s%*t in the woods!

[Phaedrus]

bingo!

the earth is far more complicated than a feature-less rock floating in space.

Erm, it IS pretty much a featureless rock in space. If you scaled it down to the size of a person it would be amazingly smooth, the height difference between the deepest trench and highest mountain only being a small fraction of the depth of the ridges on your fingertips.

Not actually true. If by "size of a person" you mean about two meters in diameter, then Mount Everest would be about 1.4cm high, and the Marianas trench would be 1.7cm deep. Mauna Kea would be 1.57cm from base to peak.

If you shrank Earth to the size of a pool ball the mountains and valleys would still be easily tactile, as our fingertips are capable of detecting bumps and surface irregularities down to the micrometer range.

[Mechanical Menace]

Not actually true. If by "size of a person" you mean about two meters in diameter, then Mount Everest would be about 1.4cm high, and the Marianas trench would be 1.7cm deep. Mauna Kea would be 1.57cm from base to peak.

Yup, you're right. Think the example was meant to be a soccerball, the depth of the Challenger Deep would be 4 millimetre lol. So I guess that teaches me not to trust pop quotes and do the maths myself...

Still pretty featureless in the grand scheme of things though. If you compare to say Mars and Olympus Mons's height, higher than the difference from the bottom of the Challenger Deep to the height of Everest on a planet only half the diameter. Then you've the 7km deep Valles Marineris to add to that height as well.

[Phaedrus]

Yes. That's mainly due to gravity (which makes tall mountains collapse and deep valleys fill up) as well as our (relatively) thick, corrosive oxygen atmosphere which causes extreme weathering. The very thing that makes Earth interesting and allows it to support life, also contributes to its relatively low-relief surface.

[CatalinaWOW]

The percentage of ignorant persons on the world is actually going down, and has been for hundreds of years.  Unfortunately the ability of the ignorant ones to communicate with each other and even leak out into the educated world has skyrocketed over the last 50 years.  We geeks have given the least among us a soapbox to speak to the entire world.

[zapta]

Below is a webcam feed from Australia. Notice how the room is not upside down. That Saudi scientist must be on something.

https://www.dropcam.com/p/Lvh0CG

Seriously, cultures go up and down. A culture that was advanced and tolerant at year Y can be primitive, fanatic and ignorant at year Y+N and vice versa. 1000 years from now it can be the other way around. Nuff said.

[Mechanical Menace]

Below is a webcam feed from Australia. Notice how the room is not upside down.

The room is upside, it's just the camera is too

[zapta]

Below is a webcam feed from Australia. Notice how the room is not upside down.

The room is upside, it's just the camera is too

I once saw a reflection of it in one of the screens and it's wasn't.



Edit: this is actually an interesting idea, to turn the eevblog webcam camera upside down on April 1st for the correct orientation for the northern hemisphere users.