I’m not sure if this is a shower thought and I’m sure I sound like a complete tool, but thinking about it on a small scale makes a lot more sense. It’s like if you fill a bathtub to the brim and then climb in, the water will overflow. I have to imagine in SOME WAY having hundreds of thousands of ships in the ocean has to be affecting the water level. Is this already a thing or do the people reading this want what I’ve been smoking? 😂
In: Planetary Science
Yes, ships in the ocean displace water, causing the shorelines to rise.
But the ocean is big. Like really, really, really, really big. So big, that despite the large amount of ships that humanity has floating around in the big blue it only increases sea level by a micron or two – aka millionths of a meter.
technically, yes you are correct, every ship in the ocean IS raising the water level.
However the amount of water they are displacing is so minimal you would never be able to tell the difference.
Yes. Ships displace the water they are in, and it has to go somewhere. A vessel that displaces 20 tons, would push 4705.882 (ish) gallons of water or 18 cubic meters of water out of the way.
But the effect on a planetary scale is so small there’s no way to accurately measure it.
Also when you push down on the earth and kick off with your legs, while you get thrown up a few feet the earth gets thrown *down* an amount. It’s a ridiculously small amount but you and it are a system. The earth pulls you down and you pull the earth, proportional to your masses.
Randall Munroe, the guy behind XKCD, did the math. It works out to a difference of about six microns. This is a little thicker than a strand of spider silk.
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