River Police

[bartmoss]

'Nuff said.

-Rob A>

Awesome. Source?

[Hawksguard]

That's very theoretical though, in the real world you'll hardly find a planet smooth enough. Indeed, I'd argue that the mere presence of rivers axiomatically means that the sphere can not be smooth enough for such a situation.

And how much does deformity of a planet caused by centrifugal force influence water behavior? I certainly am not good enough at math to figure this one out, but geek enough to want to know the answer!

I believe what Juggernaut was describing as it would be applied to planetology is the Coriolos Effect, which basically states water and air will move away from the equator as the planet rotates. In the northern hemisphere, flow is deflected to the right and in the southern hemisphere it will be deflected to the left. Of course, on any planet not entirely covered by water, continents are going to muck around with any type of 'perfect flow' and as a result, you generally have clockwise currents in n.h. and counter-clockwise in the s.h. as part of the heating-cooling cycle of the oceans. Generally. The Coriolis effect however only applies to large objects over large distances, and its effect on a river is going to be all but negligible. Also, the fact that the earth bulges at the equator due to centripetal force isn't going to have any impact on what direction a river flows, it will always follow the path of least resistance from a higher elevation to a lower one.

[Jaxilon]

@ Roba - ROFLMBO that is hilarious. I love it!

[Hawksguard]

Awesome. Source?

Looks like xkcd.

[RobA]

Looks like xkcd.

ding ding! Hawksguard is correct!

I love XKCD.

-Rob A>

[Hungry Donner]

I'm jumping in a bit late but I can think of far more major rivers that flow north than south, although I don't think there is a bias in that direction either. Most of the largest rivers in Siberia flow North (the Lena, the Ob, the Yenise), as do the MacKenzie and Red rivers of North America, the Tocantins in South America, the Rhine, and the Nile flows North.

Not that there aren't plenty flowing South: Mississippi, Danube, Mekong, Rio de la Plata, Murray, Irrawaddy.

Some are tricky. The Ganges flows more east than south, does it count? If it does the Amazon flows more east than north. The Niger and Congo rivers both have lengthy north-flowing and south-flowing sections.

If you think about it in terms of ocean outflows most rivers going to the Arctic are heading north, most going into the Atlantic and Pacific are heading east or west, and most flowing into the Indian are flowing south. Funny enough most flowing into the Antarctic would also be flowing north if they weren't frozen.

[Juggernaut1981]

'Nuff said.
-Rob A>

At this point, I surrender and give Rob A the victory based on his XKCD awareness.

I do love XKCD when they're not jumping down the potty-mouth-road-to-victory. Check out their radiation chart.