Generally speaking we know far more about the ocean than only 5%. We have a fairly complete picture of the major ocean currents and the overall circulation and why it moves the way it does. We know ,for example, that every second the Gulf Stream carries a mass of water past Cape Hatteras very second that’s greater than the weight of all the people in China!
Ann McNicholon January 4, 2021 at 12:01 pm
It all depends on how you are describing the ocean. In terms of ocean chemistry, the basics about the major elements in the ocean are well know but there are many mysteries left to uncover. For example, understanding the organic molecules in the ocean and there role in general carbon chemistry is still a great challenge. And, dissolved organic carbon, sort of the dissolved tea of the ocean, is very poorly understood and remains a topic of much research.
Like the other scientists who responded, I am not sure to what the 5% refers. How much we know depends a lot of what we want to know. Ask yourself, to “know” do we need to actually see (observe) something or can we show (model or theorize) that it is true or false based on other things we know? If we can model something (e.g. a robot could be a model of human) is everything about our result true? If we observe something does that mean we know everything about it (e.g., I see you, does that mean I know everything about you.)
What makes the ocean difficult to “know” is a) like the atmosphere, it is constantly changing and b) unlike the atmosphere it is difficult for us to “see” very far into it.
That said, what we can know is changing with technological advances. There was a time that we could only “see” as deeply as a person could dive, but then we figured out how to trap some ocean water from much deeper in a container and bring it up to the surface to look at it. Now we have vehicles and machines that can go to the very bottom of the ocean with sampling equipment, cameras and other sensors and even people. It used to be we could only measure something in one location at a time, now we have satellites that working together can give as average images of over the whole globe every few days (note, most can still only measure the very surface of the ocean).
Generally speaking we know far more about the ocean than only 5%. We have a fairly complete picture of the major ocean currents and the overall circulation and why it moves the way it does. We know ,for example, that every second the Gulf Stream carries a mass of water past Cape Hatteras very second that’s greater than the weight of all the people in China!
It all depends on how you are describing the ocean. In terms of ocean chemistry, the basics about the major elements in the ocean are well know but there are many mysteries left to uncover. For example, understanding the organic molecules in the ocean and there role in general carbon chemistry is still a great challenge. And, dissolved organic carbon, sort of the dissolved tea of the ocean, is very poorly understood and remains a topic of much research.
Like the other scientists who responded, I am not sure to what the 5% refers. How much we know depends a lot of what we want to know. Ask yourself, to “know” do we need to actually see (observe) something or can we show (model or theorize) that it is true or false based on other things we know? If we can model something (e.g. a robot could be a model of human) is everything about our result true? If we observe something does that mean we know everything about it (e.g., I see you, does that mean I know everything about you.)
What makes the ocean difficult to “know” is a) like the atmosphere, it is constantly changing and b) unlike the atmosphere it is difficult for us to “see” very far into it.
That said, what we can know is changing with technological advances. There was a time that we could only “see” as deeply as a person could dive, but then we figured out how to trap some ocean water from much deeper in a container and bring it up to the surface to look at it. Now we have vehicles and machines that can go to the very bottom of the ocean with sampling equipment, cameras and other sensors and even people. It used to be we could only measure something in one location at a time, now we have satellites that working together can give as average images of over the whole globe every few days (note, most can still only measure the very surface of the ocean).