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Fun Facts 
 
What if... 

...all the water was drained out of the oceans? What would it look like? 

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Click to visit San Francisco Bay!  

The grey portion of the image above is a special kind of sonar image (called ashaded relief) which shows the topography under the water of San Francisco Bay.  

The colorful parts are fromsatellite* images*taken of the San Francisco area. Click on the image* to see a larger version. 

In the image we can see rocks, sandwaves, and other things we can't normally see in the Bay because they are covered by water.

The mid-ocean ridges have a combined length of46,000 miles... that's more than 4 times the lengths of the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas combined!Wow! 
Mount Everestis considered the tallest mountain on Earth... but, if you measureMauna Kea(a Hawaiian volcano) from the seafloor to its top, it's more than4000 feettaller than Mount Everest is from its base floor (sea level)!

Mount Everest -29,028 feet  
Mauna Kea -33, 465 feet  
 
The deepest point in the ocean is6.8 milesdown!
* Glossary Words: satellite, image, bathymetry

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Did you know...
 
It only snows about 2 inches per year over most of Antarctica?
 		In polar areas in mid-summer, there is no night -- daylight lasts almost 24 hours a day! And, in the Antarctic, summer lasts from November until February!
Where is the largest desert on Earth? On the Antarctic continent! This is because the average precipitation (snow or rain) is only about 2 inches per year over most of the Antarctic.The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica? 128.6 degrees Farenheit below zero! BRRRRRR!
 
 
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Believe it or not!
If we mined all the gold suspended in the world's ocean water, it would give every person on Earth 9 pounds!!! 
 		[volcano drawing]  
90% of all volcanic activity occurs in the Earth's oceans!
 
Biologists estimate that anywhere from ahalf a milliontofive million marineplants and animals have yet to be discovered!
 
 
 		71%of the Earth's surface is  
covered by oceans...  

97%of the Earth's water  
is in the oceans...  

Less than 1%  
is fresh water (like rivers and lakes) 

2 to 3%is frozen in  
glaciers and icecaps!!!

 
 
 
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Last Modified: Thu Oct 31 15:08:17 MST 2002		FirstGov: Your First Click to the U.S. Gov ernment