Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Fabulous image representing “all the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc.”, on a single sphere.

In the same scale, at right, “all the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density.”

Graphic by Dan Phiffer, via Fogonazos.

UPDATE: This post has been suggested on BoingBoing (wow!), and the power of the masses has quickly located the credits for it.

It’s by Adam Nieman / Science Photo Library (US). Some have doubted the accuracy of the graphic, but Dan Phiffer (check the link above) also updated his post with more info verifying that the representation is correct.

So correct, that Dr Adam Nieman was awarded with it in 2004 in the Visions of Science photo competition.