[Marika (OP)]

Simone says:

I was arguing with a few friends of mine about the term that you hear a lot in documentaries when it comes to marine life "We know more about space than we know about our oceans". (the exact wording in this case was "other planets are better researched than our own oceans")

So we got into a bit of a discussion, one friend saying that this is not true because space is infinitely larger than the ocean therefore we can´t know more about it.

Whereas my take on it was that we have done more research on space and have therefore a bigger knowledge about it than we do about the oceans.

First of all, is it even true, and second is there a definition on knowledge and is it dependent on the size of the thing that is being studied?

Can you help?

[Kryptid]

I'm going to have to say that we know more about the oceans than space because there are an enormous number of entities in space that we haven't even found yet, let alone studied. The vast majority of extrasolar planets haven't even been found yet, and some estimates suggest that there may be as many of them as there are stars in the Universe. There are even things in space that we know about that haven't been investigated very well. We've never explored the oceans of Europa, Enceladus or any body other than Earth, for example. So obviously, we know more about our own oceans than we do about the oceans on the moons in our own Solar System.

[evan_au]

In one sense, we have high-resolution imaging of the surface of Mars and the Moon available to the public, but apparently the resolution of imaging of the Earth's oceans is relatively poor (in the public domain).

That is because most imaging of the sea floor is done by towed sonar sounders, and you can't travel very fast. High-frequency ultrasound doesn't travel very far underwater, and not many people have a cable that reaches into the deep ocean.

On the other hand, every navy in the world has been busy surveying the ocean to find places they could hide submarines (or find submarines) - but they don't share it with the public or each other. They have mainly been focusing on depths that can be reached by submarine, ie mostly continental shelves. And not too interested in the wildlife.

Oil and mineral companies have also been surveying the ocean floor to find manganese nodules and potential oil and gas deposits. But they have mainly been focussing on depths that can be reached by trawling or by deep ocean drilling (think Deepwater Horizon). But they don't share it with the public or each other, either.

Could it be that the only reason the public can access so much information about space is because it is currently of no economic/military benefit. And space programs rely on public support (at least in democratic nations).

[RjMaan]

I think neither we know much about oceans nor about space. There are still a lot of things to discover.

[rami999]

i think so,, thats all because of NASA