^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I’m so glad I actually know what this is now, because it’s just. Blatantly wrong to say this is anywhere close to what the planet looks like.
Here’s how it is.
We have pictures of the Earth from space, right? And it sure as hell looks like a nice, smooth sphere. (I mean, actually it’s an oblate spheroid because due to the revolution around our axis, the equator bulges a bit, but if you’re looking at the Earth from far enough away to see the whole thing, you’re absolutely not gonna notice a difference of a few miles.)
But because of the whole “the surface of the Earth is 70% water” deal, it’s tempting to say “okay, just fill in those gaping valleys with water, and there you go, the Earth will look smooth from space”. But, the thing is, the surface features of the Earth, including the ocean, are absolutely tiny. Way tinier than people generally think they are - for reasons that aren’t really their fault.
Take a standard globe. You run your fingers over it, and you feel very obvious lumps, representing mountain ranges and plateaus and the like, yeah? Well, that’s a huge exaggeration. Like. HUGE.
If you were actually looking at the Earth at the scale of your average globe (if you were a space giant, say), and you ran your fingers over it, the range from the top of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (deepest point in the world’s oceans), would fit in the folds of your fingerprints. Think about that. You wouldn’t even know the oceans were there as you skimmed your fingers over the globe-sized planet, just from feeling it, because how on Earth would you notice such an insignificant amount of water?
Therefore, there’s no way in hell the rocky parts of the Earth could look so distorted and lumpy, but then be evened out by the oceans.
I’m not saying that there aren’t any differences in the levels of continents and ocean floors and whatnot, obviously that’s not true. But our surface features are absolutely insignificant to the planet as a whole, size-wise. So this little graphic cannot be an accurate representation of what the Earth actually looks like.
(Source (x) )
