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Being a fan of The Expanse this is really cool. It really puts the size of a lot of the moons and dwarf planets from the series into perspective. Ganymede for example, was used by pregnant mothers in the outer-system because it was large enough to still have an active core and thus a magnetosphere. Shielding the surface from a lot of radiation. Their main food crops were grown there for the same reason.
Io, Callisto, Europa, Eris, Titan, Ceres, and a few others all make appearances too. It’s an amazing series, for those who haven’t read/seen it, whether you read the books or watch the show.
I guess it’s easy to forget just how much smaller Mars is until comparisons like this help put it in perspective.
I can’t readily recall the Earth’s actual sq. km surface area, and can’t remember ever having heard the figure for Mars. Time to drop into Wikipedia and take a gander, I think.
EDIT: I’ll be damned, TIL that the Earth has an area of 510.06 10^6 km², but Mars’ is only 144.37 10^6 km², only about 1⁄3 the size (28.3%).
The circumference is roughly 40,000 kilometers. The original definition for a meter was such that 10,000 kilometers was the distance from the equator to the poles (so a quarter of the circumference). They got the math slightly wrong and didn’t want to people to think the process was wrong so they didn’t correct it. I forget the actual circumference but that is close enough for very rough estimates.
the distance from the equator to the poles is a quarter of the circumference
Yeah idk why I got circumference and diameter mixed up. Whoops.
Pebble
Thank you! It looked very XKCD to me, so I was surprised when the source link wasn’t to that.
Edit: oops… Meant to reply to the comment with the xkcd link.
It is xkcd
Apparently I didn’t reply to the comment giving the xkcd link like I intended…
It is xkcd but my link was elsewhere with some details. It does credit xkcd.
What’s the unlabeled one?
/s
A mostly harmless area
Nice. Good entry.
They’re not noble enough to be on this map
I guess fact it’s mostly gas means I don’t have to ask, “where’s Uranus?”
But if we’re counting the liquid parts of Earth, shouldn’t we include the squashy centers of Uranus and Jupiter?
Yes, I was wondering the same question. Jupiter surface would definitely dwarf anything else
Jupiter has no surface, just a gradually increasing density. When you sink in the ocean, you eventually reach the ocean floor. On Jupiter you just keep sinking until your surroundings match your density.
Source states:
All Human Skin
Where?
E: found it. Tiny spot northeast of Australia.
actually surprisingly large
[tattoo artists breathing heavily]
Damm Earth is big
Why does earth include the oceans though?
Imagine excluding land underneath puddles
Ahh I didn’t realize, I thought it was only exposed solid surface. Does that mean every other solar system body with water doesn’t have separate islands/continents? Because if no, then earth should be depicted as one solid shape without the divisions as well. I get it though, it’s for scale.
Does that mean every other solar system body with water doesn’t have separate islands/continents?
Am I reading this wrong, or were you under the impression liquid water isn’t a special Earth thing (and the defining factor of the habitable zone)? I’d say you’re in the lucky 10,000, but that fact is actually kind of depressing to learn.
Titan is the only other one with known surface liquids of any kind. I suppose Randall Munroe could have given it’s lakes of natural gas the same treatment.
Yeah I overestimated a teeny tiny bit the number of places in the solar system that have liquid water on the actual surface. My bad.
This is part of the reason why some people are skeptical of human space travel; all the other real estate out there is pretty bad, and looking at this map I realise it’s not even that much, really. You basically have barren rocks like the moon, bottomless atmospheres like the gas giants and Venus, and then Titan.
Oh yeah, seriously Mars is a really bad choice of an exoplanet to colonize, so small the gravity difference will kill you if none of the other horrible things about it.
Venus is actually the most reasonable and likely to be habitable but you know… We have to figure out the whole “stop it from melting us” thing and the constant volcano action aint helping.We will probably colonize space on asteroids with slave labor before anywhere else in this solar system.
You were within one order of magnitude, don’t fret!
What is the lucky 10,000?
Also aren’t there other moons of that gas giants that have liquids like liquid methane(?) where people speculate there could be types of life?
Nope, it’s just Titan. There’s other moons that have deep liquid water oceans under their frozen crust, which might be what you’re thinking of.
Welp, there’s my next TTRPG map.
Why does this look like bootleg Tamriel sans the high elf island I can’t remember the name of fuck off Sheogorath it is not the Shivering Isles.
Summerset
Thank you.
I dunno,
I didnt see a Cheddar Gorge so this doesnt look like any Somerset i know.
The atmosphere must be intense (incredibly dense, solid on the rocky surface) as I assume all the gas planets are included too, just all over the place :D.
Unless it’s a flattt world and the excess gas just fell off.
Let’s just say, that’s not ocean surrounding it :p
Haha, that works too - a not too seriously sci sci-fi (the kind where your shouldn’t question the science part bcs it’s one plot hole after another) would make up a space race that takes rocks in a solar system & floats them on a gas giant like an island.
No, the gas giants are excluded.
Sorry, my, bad, should have added the “/s”.
It’s just a petty attempt at a joke, or exploring the absurd (despite that they are obviously excluded) for the fun of it.
TIL Ganymede is bigger than Mercury?
So is Titan.
Hard to say with the irregular shape, but they’re close.
What really gets me is how small Mars is relative to Earth and Venus.
Kinda shows how useless the fantasy of living on Mars really is. Not only is this a barren wasteland, it’s also a tiny barren wasteland.
The picture got me curious, so I went to check on Wikipedia. It’s just bonkers that moons are bigger than planets.
Pangea is bigger than anyone thought. Cool.
Made me think of lake mobius from hunter x hunter :3 that’s way bigger tho
