Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1899 — Ocean and Earth. [ARTICLE]

Ocean and Earth.

A bucket 743 miles deep and 743 miles from side to side would hold every drop of the ocean. This bucket could rest quite firmly on the British Isles. To flu the bucket one would need to work 10,000 steam pumps, each sucking up 1,000 tons of sea. But to get rid of the earth would be 4,555 times more difficult, requiring 2,000 great guns, each firing 1,000 projectiles a second, each projectile consisting of 100,000 tons of earth. At the end of 1,000 years this mundane sphere would be all shot away.