Rashidat Oladele
Claim: Pacific Ocean covers more area than all the land masses on earth
A post was made on facebook by @ourladyofhopeschool.com.ng about the size of the Pacific Ocean with the caption “The Pacific Ocean is the largest water mass on the planet?it covers more area than all the land masses on earth”the video showed a descriptive visual of the Pacific Ocean.
The largest and deepest of the five oceanic divisions on Earth is the Pacific Ocean. Its boundaries are the continents of Asia and Australia in the west, the Americas in the east, and the Arctic Ocean in the north. It stretches to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south.
This largest division of the World Ocean and the hydrosphere covers approximately 46% of Earth’s water surface and about 32% of the planet’s total surface area, larger than its entire land area (148,000,000 km2 (57,000,000 sq mi)). Its area is 165,250,000 square kilometers (63,800,000 square miles) (as defined with a southern Antarctic border).
NatureNews, Africa’s foremost news publications which is dedicated to providing accurate insights to stop the spread of fake news particularly among users of social media, subjected the claim to fact checking by NatureFact, the fact checking unit of NatureNews.
Findings: Using the Google search tool in conducting this research, a few papers and studies were accessed.
These include:
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/biggestocean.html
https://www.nps.gov/places/000/how-big-is-the-pacific-ocean.htm
https://geography.name/pacific-ocean/
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-oceans-of-the-world-by-size.html
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/pacific-ocean.htm
Verdict: True
