What would happen if you pulled the plug on Earth's oceans
A stunning new animation has revealed what would happen if someone pulled a hypothetical ‘plug’ at the bottom of the ocean, causing all of the world’s water to swirl down the drain.
While the effects to the climate and ecosystems would undoubtedly be dramatic, it would take far longer than you might expect for the water to actually pour out.
Given the magnitude of the water and the relatively small size of the drain, a new model shared on Reddit shows it would take hundreds of thousands of years to reshape the continents – and, there wouldn’t be a visible whirlpool at the surface.
To calculate the changes for the animation, the Reddit user turned to a simplified version of the Bernoulli incompressible flow equation, named for the Swiss mathematician. It shows what would happen if someone pulled a 10-meter plug in the Mariana Trench
HOW EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE In a matter of 2 million years, a land bridge appears to connect North America and Europe. Once the ocean has drained by 3 kilometers (1.8 miles), the peaks of the mid-ocean ridge become visible, Munroe noted in the original post. At 5 kilometers (3 miles), the oceans are almost entirely fragmented and have stopped draining. While the animation shows the Pacific Ocean is essentially the first to go, with much of its space dominated by land by the end, this doesn’t necessarily mean the other oceans are deeper, the creator explains.
The new model created by Reddit user Vinnytsia re-examines a ‘what if’ scenario explored in a book by Randall Munroe, known for creating the xkcd webcomic.
In the hypothetical situation, a 10-meter-wide plug in the Mariana Trench has been yanked, opening a circular portal that can dump the ocean water to Mars.
This ensures it’s far enough that the water wouldn’t just rain back down onto the surface.
As the animation shows, the effects as viewed from a satellite might not be so clear right away.
Over thousands of years, however, dramatic changes begin to set in.
Alaska, for example, can be seen spreading out within the first 40,000 years.
Before 1 million years have passed, the Arctic and Antarctic have begun to see far more land as well.
A stunning new animation has revealed what would happen if someone pulled a hypothetical ‘plug’ at the bottom of the ocean, causing all of the world’s water to swirl down the drain. The world is pictured above in the first year after the plug has been pulled
While the effects to the climate and ecosystems would undoubtedly be dramatic, it would take far longer than you might expect for the water to actually pour out. As shown above, the visible effects remain minimal even 457,986 years after
In a matter of 2 million years, a land bridge appears to connect North America and Europe.
Over the next million years, the drainage becomes far more apparent throughout the oceans, breaking up the once-continuous regions of blue with wide land areas.
Once the ocean has drained by 3 kilometers (1.8 miles), the peaks of the mid-ocean ridge become visible, Munroe noted in the original post.
At 5 kilometers (3 miles), the oceans are almost entirely fragmented and have stopped draining.
In a matter of 2 million years, a land bridge appears to connect North America and Europe. Over the next million years, the drainage becomes far more apparent throughout the oceans, breaking up the once-continuous regions of blue with wide land areas (shown above)
What’s left behind includes shallow seas, lakes, and some deep trenches.
To calculate the changes for the animation, the Reddit user turned to a simplified version of the Bernoulli incompressible flow equation, named for the Swiss mathematician.
While the animation shows the Pacific Ocean is essentially the first to go, with much of its space dominated by land by the end, this doesn’t necessarily mean the other oceans are deeper, the creator explains.
Instead, the water in other areas appears to get ‘landlocked,’ causing it to stop draining.