This is just a notorius (you can say) question, that if the water is kept aside from the picture of the earth, how the earth will look from the remote place in the space, say from sattelite.

Just, curious. we know it will not happen at any cost, but just for a fun.

It would be brown instead of blue-and-white. No water would mean no clouds or oceans.

Otherwise it would look about the same. The shape would still be as smooth as a medium-quality billiard ball. It's only a few kilometers from the bottom of the ocean trenches to the top of the Himalayas, compared with the Earth's thousands of kilometers radius.

Even the slight bulge at the equator would not cause a very significant deviation from a perfect sphere.

Of course, with no water, there wouldn't be any "us" around to see it.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I agree with Donnie B.. The ocean floor would rebound a little, it's carrying a lot of weight. Over time, it would rebound even more.

You can see the topography of the ocean bottom easily enough in many oceanographic maps, as well as Google Earth.

Of course, they wouldn't be deep blue in colour.

If you actually removed all the water and looked the Earth as if it hadn't had those oceans all that time, it would likely be dusty red-brown (iron oxide).

So basically, it would look very much like a large Mars.

Hum,
i imagine the tectonic processes would be different if there were no water.
Over time, i guess, the geology would become more Venusian.

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Hang on, I've StumbledUpon this very image, let's see if I can't find it...

Hmm, one NASA page says there wouldn't be any tectonic activity.

Where is that image ... oh well, it was really well done down to the green of the continents removed. The only thing, and the artist mentioned it himself, was that he had left in clouds.

well maybe their thinking the weight of water would effect plate tectonics.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

lubrication

Did not think of that, but your the geophysicist.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

It's just too bad that we can't test these concepts in the lab

I don't think tectonics would cease entirely. The Earth would still have a semi-fluid mantle, internal heat, hot spots, and a crispy crunchy outer crust. While the lack of water for lubrication may make the details a bit different, I'd still expect to see chunks of crust floating around and banging into each other. Slowly, of course.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

What are tectonics like on the other planets of the solar system? Gas giants and.. Of Course! Europa excluded .......

For the most part, there aren't any on non-earth bodies. Even Io doesn't, I don't think, despite all the volcanism. Europa does have "ice sheet tectonics" though.

Todd

__________________
-----
Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

cant touch Europa

I think we should get rid of the water for a while and test your hypotheses...

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Mars had some rifting, but there's debate about whether or not there was actually some tectonics before it shut down.

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

This thread started by AKONI has a link to an interesting article about research into the makeup of Earth's mantle. From the the last paragraph of the article: