Feature Article February 20, 2003
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Did you Know That?...by Gray Merriam The earth is as smooth as a billiard ball. The deepest of the 'deeps' in the Marianas Trench of the Pacific Ocean at 11,022 metres is no more than the little dips in the surface of a new cueball.
Mount Everest is a minor bump at 8846 metres above sea level. Proportionately, Everest is about as high as two layers of plastic milk bag on the surface of a 3-inch ball. So what? We all should realize, especially just after the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, that we humans are not able to survive, without technical life support, anywhere except in that thin layer right on the earth's surface. Very few are able to make it to the summit of high mountains without at least bottled oxygen, and usually much, much more support. Going below the seas is much the same. Ask your scuba-diving friends how deeply they can dive even with all their gear. Both going up and coming up from going down, we are unable to tolerate the unusual concentrations of gasses involved with our breathing. Without complicated, expensive and difficult-to-maintain technical support, we really can not tolerate much variation in our environment. Our ability to adapt is best described as humble. Unless we want our lives to be encumbered by very complex technological support, perhaps we should behave with a lot more humility towards our environment.
