geology, image, physics, science, short

Pixel Earth 1

I present you: a scale model of the Earth’s surface, from an altitude of 400 kilometers down to a depth of 300 kilometers. At this scale, every pixel is 1 km by 1 km.crust-1-px-eq-1-km-numbered-large

Legend:

  1. The International Space Station at perigee.
  2. The aurora borealis.
  3. The greatest altitude at which human beings have died: cosmonoauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev died just before the reentry of Soyuz 11, when the explosive decoupling of the descent module opened an oxygen seal in the cockpit.
  4. The highest altitude reached by the Air Force’s X-15, which still holds the speed record for a crewed aircraft, and which was among the first crewed vehicles to cross into space.
  5. The official edge of space: the Kármán line, at around 100 kilometers altitude. Above this line, you have to move faster than orbital velocity for wings to provide usable lift, so you might as well just orbit.
  6. The streak denotes the range of altitudes at which meteors glow.
  7. The streak denotes the altitudes at which the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite glowed. The starburst denotes the approximate altitude at which it exploded.
  8. The altitude at which the Space Shuttle Columbia stopped sending telemetry and began its final breakup.
  9. On a less sad note: the altitude from which Felix Baumgartner began his famous skydive.
  10. The top of the troposphere (where weather happens); the beginning of the stratosphere; the top of thunderstorms in middle and tropical latitudes.
  11. 10,000 meters: the altitude at which passenger airplanes cruise.
  12. The summit of Mt. Everest.
  13. The Challenger Deep (over 10,000 meters deep).
  14. The deepest active mining operation: 4,000 meters, at the Mpomeng gold mine in South Africa.
  15. The deepest human beings have ever drilled: 12 kilometers at the Kola Superdeep Borehole, in Russia.
  16. The deepest confirmed location in a natural cave: 2 km, in Krubera Cave, in Abkhazia, Georgia (the Eastern European Georgia, not the American one.) The cave very likely goes deeper.
  17. Volcanic magma chambers. Contrary to popular belief, most of the mantle is a plastic solid (like very, very stiff Silly Putty), rather than molten. Magma is the exception. The magma chamber that feeds Hawai’i’s volcanoes is on the shallow end of the spectrum. The magma chamber underneath the Yellowstone Caldera (which provides heat for Yellowstone’s famous geysers) sits at around 25 to 35 kilometers deep. We have actual rough maps of it. It’s awesome.
  18. The Mohorovičić discontinuity (or Moho; no, not the KSP one): the official boundary between crust and mantle. It can be as shallow as 5 kilometers deep (beneath the seafloor) and 90 kilometers deep (under mountains); it averages 35 kilometers deep.
  19. Very deep magma chambers.
  20. The end of the asthenosphere, a region of rock made weak and squishy (relatively speaking) by the enormous temperature and pressure. This starts beneath the solid crust (the lithosphere). Its boundary isn’t well-defined.
  21. A hot plume in the upper mantle. Droplets (well, droplet-sized compared to the whole Earth) of lower-melting-point material rise through the mantle to fill magma chambers.

(I should point out that I’m not a geologist. If I’ve made a mistake, please let me know. You won’t hurt my feelings. I’d rather admit I’m wrong than put out a misleading graphic.)

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5 thoughts on “Pixel Earth 1

  1. Ah! KSP! I have never reached Moho yet. I sent a manned – er – Kerballed mission which lacked the fuel to complete the encounter deceleration and ended up in a solar orbit from which it had to be rescued, although not before the rescue mission itself required rescuing…

      • It’s a very cool game – the ‘gravitation’ model is only an approximation but it’s close enough to be annoying… 🙂 The best part is that (because I haven’t loaded the ‘life support’ mod) the Kerbals seem to be able to survive forever in their little capsules. Doubtless some sort of innate photosynthesis owing to being green…

      • I love that game. They do a pretty good job balancing realism and complexity with fun. Although I must admit, some of the outer-planet stuff gets painfully lengthy.

  2. Pingback: Pixel Earth 2 | Sublime Curiosity

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