Imagine the Earth in your mind’s eye. Now round up all the water on the planet into a sphere (we’re talking oceans, icecaps, atmosphere, everything — even the water bound up in you and me).  How big do you think that sphere would be compared to the Earth?

Got your answer? Our water sphere would have a diameter of 1,385 kilometers (about 860 miles), and span the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. A sphere this far across would have a volume equal to about 1,386 million cubic kilometers (roughly 332,500,000 cubic miles). Those might sound like big numbers (and they certainly are big numbers) but wait until you see this sphere beside the Earth.

Read the full article by Robert Gonzales on I09: http://io9.com/5908108/if-you-collected-all-of-earths-water-into-a-sphere-how-big-would-it-be

Illustration Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS. Data source: Igor Shiklomanov’s chapter “World fresh water resources” Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World’s Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, New York)