My first version of this was a little confusing – this should be simpler although I mix measurement systems, that’s just how I can relate to different distances.
Standing in an average room, around 8 feet high – imagine a model of our world – a big, round, inflated ball reaching up to the ceiling.
If that represents the Earth, then;
the ‘edge of space’ would be about 19mm above the surface of the ball – that’s less than the diameter of a 1p coin.
all the moisture content in the atmosphere and almost all of our weather is contained within about 4mm of the surface.
an airliner will typically fly no higher than just 2mm – around the thickness of a 50p coin – from the surface.
the deepest part of the ocean will be just over 2mm below the line,
the average depth of the North Atlantic Ocean is a shade over 0.5mm,
the deepest bore-hole drilled to date (the Kola Superdeep Borehole) is about 2.3mm deep,
in the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream which keeps us relatively warm for this latitude, is a very thin and narrow band of about 0.25mm deep and on average 19mm wide, but flows around 750mm (about the length of my arm) from, say, Bermuda to Ireland,
the Greenland ice sheet is about 0.5mm at it’s deepest and is approx 450mm long (a page and a half of A4) and just over 200mm wide (just slightly narrower than A4).
the International Space Station orbits little more than 65mm from the surface (the width of 3 £1 coins) and
GPS satellites on which your sat-nav depends, orbit more than 3.75m – over 12 feet from the surface.
Our world is so big, so strong and we are just a thin smear on the surface – making nature angry.
Forward, positively.. 