Oh, Inverted World
August 14, 2007 3:47 PM   Subscribe

Oh, Inverted World. As we’ve all learned in school, 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, only 30% is solid ground. What if everything was reversed? What if every land mass was a body of water, and vice versa?
posted by Ufez Jones (25 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Very cool map. Even with the helpful tree and fish pictures dotting the map, it's incredibly difficult to get my brain to reverse the land and water.
posted by danb at 3:51 PM on August 14, 2007


Huh, nice coincidence. This has been my background for weeks- found it at interfacelift.
posted by hincandenza at 3:56 PM on August 14, 2007


Strangely enough, it leaves off what would possibly the inverted Earth's most impressive feature, the Marianas Mountain range.
posted by horsemuth at 3:56 PM on August 14, 2007


GAH! I live in a lake!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:59 PM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]


double?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:22 PM on August 14, 2007


Water, that's what I'm getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that seventy percent of you is water?
posted by Poolio at 4:32 PM on August 14, 2007


They would not be OCEANS, they would be SEAS. WTF CARTOGRAPHER?
posted by absalom at 4:35 PM on August 14, 2007 [2 favorites]


horsemuth: different kind of inverting, and probably one that would be *more* interesting than the posted image. Using detailed topographical information, invert the surface of the earth in 3-D (although choosing an inversion point would be tough- current sea level, I suppose). This would make the Marianas mountain range a mile and change higher than Everest, while Everest would become the deepest point on the ocean floor.

Thing is, using the current sea-level as the center wouldn't quite work; the net surface drop of all the land mass below sea level that is currently above it wouldn't be enough to contain the current water volume contained in the seas. I guess we either envision a less watery world, or calculate the rise in sea-level in that now inverted world (which would make the Mariana mountain range much shorter, while Everest might in turne become deeper than the Marianas' is now).

If that topographical information is available, that would make for a truly cool 3-d earth representation...
posted by hincandenza at 4:35 PM on August 14, 2007 [3 favorites]


Strangely enough, it leaves off what would possibly the inverted Earth's most impressive feature, the Marianas Mountain range

Look southeast of Lake Japan.
posted by Bonzai at 4:40 PM on August 14, 2007


Bevel effects on parchment?
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on August 14, 2007


Don't miss the windrose...
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:51 PM on August 14, 2007


That whole blog is pretty cool. I like the "United Countries of Baseball" map:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/160-the-united-countries-of-baseball/
posted by Target Practice at 4:53 PM on August 14, 2007


They were right to exclude Lemuria, of course, but they forgot Atlantis and Mu, which would be the modern superpowers.
posted by goatdog at 5:06 PM on August 14, 2007


Imagine the massive engineering project that would be undertaken to connect the Mississippi Land Bridge from Mexico Land to the Great Islands.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:12 PM on August 14, 2007


It would be really good if as well as the neat aesthetics, someone constructed an alternate physico-ennviro-socio-history of inverted earth.

THAT would be a 'counterfactual' that I would read in a heartbeat.
posted by lalochezia at 5:13 PM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]


How about Inversia? (via)
posted by teraflop at 5:15 PM on August 14, 2007


This guy did a better job.
posted by black8 at 5:15 PM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]


United Ocean? Mexico Land? Antarctica Ocean? Was this the preproduction artwork for Idiocracy?
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:19 PM on August 14, 2007


Awesome, another map blog to add to my RSS reader.
posted by desjardins at 5:57 PM on August 14, 2007


That strange furry creature is enough to keep me off of Inversia for some time.
posted by absalom at 6:12 PM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]


That world-creating-guy would be a lot cooler without the furry fetish.
posted by Citizen Premier at 7:38 PM on August 14, 2007


The Redonda one was facinating. Think they are ripe for a coup?
posted by figment of my conation at 8:20 PM on August 14, 2007


GAH! I live in a lake!

You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
posted by bwg at 1:05 AM on August 15, 2007 [1 favorite]


Hincandenza: couldn't you just invert it about any depth point, and then adjust the average earth diameter in or out until the volume of water fell back to the same sea level?

I think it would be neat to see the land shapes if you adjusted sea level until the same 70/30 water/land area ratio resulted.
posted by ctmf at 1:17 AM on August 15, 2007


This is very cool
posted by ob at 7:23 AM on August 15, 2007


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