Earth Smoother Than A Cue Ball? 😱 w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Right, you ever see the schoolroom globes, the geographic globes? And you rub your finger over Nepal and you get the Himalayas and you get the Rockies.

[00:00:08]He says, "Oh, that is a gross exaggeration." Do you realize if you took Earth with all of its mountains, valleys, and hills and shrunk it down to the size of a cue ball, it'd be smoother than any cue ball ever machined. Do you know the deepest part of Earth's crust, the Mariana Trench, off the coast of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean? It goes 6 mi down. The highest point on Earth's surface, tip of K1 in Nepal. The distance between the lowest point on Earth's surface and the highest point on Earth's surface is 11 mi. That is less than the length of Manhattan, yet we are 8,000 mi in diameter. Those two points are very far separated from one another.

[00:00:43]If you are cosmic giant and you came up to Earth and you rubbed your finger over Earth's surface, it would feel as smooth as a cue ball to you.