Maybe the Human People of This Planet Can Again Be Numbered Two or Three Billion or So
Later a year and a one-half of writing Wait Just Why posts, I've noticed a theme: humans seem to come upwards a lot.
Sometimes we talk almost where humans came from or where nosotros might exist going or how we're all related; other times we look at how we collaborate and communicate and form relationships. We've talked nearly rich humans and famous humans and baby humans and dead humans and humans from all over the world. Nosotros've explored what it means to be a homo, what information technology ways to exist a skilful human, and whether we're all alone in the universe. And nosotros've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what really matters most in this 1, short human life.
But somehow, nosotros made information technology through all of that discussion without always asking the nearly of import question of all about humans—
How big a building would you need to fit them all in it?
It's a question that's tantalized almost no one through the ages, and today we're gonna tackle it hard.
But earlier we enquire all vii.iii billion humans to finish what they're doing so I can suit and bunch them together at my whim, permit's discuss the number 7.3 billion.
The showtime thing to annotation is that when I did a post on population density in Baronial of 2013, the number I kept referring to was vii.one billion. The world population has grown by 194,000,000, or almost 3%, since and so.
Second, 7.3 billion people is a lot of people. If each living human were represented by a dry grain of rice, the rice would fill a cube-shaped box with a side of half dozen.1 meters,1 or well-nigh 20 feet—around the size of a two-story house.
That's a lot of rice grains.
And how about 7.iii billion grains of sand? Well according to this delightful chart, "sand" can hateful a lot of things. seven.three billion "very coarse" grains (about 2mm in bore) would fill a large cubic room with a acme of 4m (13ft). 7.3 billion medium-size grains (.25mm in diameter) would fill a medium, 46cm loftier (1.5ft) cardboard box. And 7.3 billion of the finest, .0625mm sand grains (whatever smaller and it wouldn't be sand anymore—it would exist silt) would take up about 1,700 cubic centimeters of space, almost but not quite filling a two-liter soda bottle.
Also, walking 7.three billion steps would take you around the Earth…150 times. (At 2 steps per second, that would take you 115 years.) (I'm doing that affair where I'm going on divergent math spirals during the mail and then just putting what I figured out into the bodily postal service. I'll attempt to stay on topic here but it won't be easy. Let'due south keep going.)
7.3 billion humans in one-dimensional configurations
The starting time activeness today will be putting all humans in a single file line. We'll start nearly Quito, Republic of ecuador, right on the equator, and the line will follow the equator. We'll begin with Carlos. Stand here, Carlos.
Second in line will exist Daniela. Tertiary is you, Andrea.1 Since nosotros're trying to be efficient, I desire everyone to stand as close as possible to the people in forepart of you lot and behind y'all without actually touching. Some people will require more or less space than others considering people are different sizes, but let's assume each person we add to the line will brand the line 1 human foot (about 30cm) longer on average.two
So we do this for a while and the line gets longer and longer. Nosotros build bridges over oceans and tunnels through mountains to make a clean line along the equator. Eventually, the line goes around the whole Earth gets dorsum to Carlos. But we've just gotten through 131 million people—less than 2% of humans—then we'll need to wind around the Earth again. And again. Finally, halfway through the 56th loop, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, we get to the final human, and we're washed.
Okay that kind of bellyaching me because it ended up in the shape of spring, not a line. Permit'south endeavor some other way.
Carlos, stand on the X again. Nosotros're gonna have Daniela stand on your shoulders, and then Andrea's gonna stand on hers, and we'll just continue going upwardly from there.
The average man is 165cm (5'v″) tall, but about a foot of that is from the shoulders to the top of the caput, so when we add together someone onto the top person's shoulders, the meridian of the tower rises by an average of about 134cm (iv'5″).
We stack and stack and somewhen, we reach the moon. Unfortunately, we've simply used 286 one thousand thousand people at this betoken and have 96% of humans still left to go. By the time we finally finish, the belfry is 9.eight million km (6.1m miles) loftier, and nosotros're around 1/5th of the manner to Mars, 1/4th of the fashion to Venus, and 1/15th of the manner to the sunday.two
How well-nigh if nosotros all held easily and formed a huge circle? Let's say that we'll stand side-past-side, holding hands, which is enough distance apart to take upward about three feet (91cm) of the circle each.
Standing like this, our final circle has a circumference of six.6 million km (4.1m miles) and a diameter of ii.i million km (1.3m miles).
While we're all out there holding hands and dying instantly from beingness in infinite without suits, the Earth will look to us around the aforementioned size as the moon ordinarily looks in our night sky.
Okay one dimensional shapes are pretty inconvenient for everyone—let'due south reel things in and try this in 2 dimensions:
7.3 billion humans in two-dimensional configurations
The addition of a second dimension to our human being shapes makes the species seem a lot smaller.
When arranging humans in ii dimensions, the first question we demand to inquire is, "How much basis expanse does each homo need when we're bunching them all together as closely as we tin without killing everyone?" The answer, for this post, is .1 foursquare meters, giving us a rate of 10 people per square meter.
How Many People Can Fit in a Foursquare Meter Comfortably-ish?
The quest for this answer brought me to the most obscure corners of the net, where I came across two key groups of bored people. The first one shows nine Canadian journalists choosing to spend time positioning themselves together into one square meter. Doing so gives each of them an average of one 33cm x 33cm (13″ 10 13″) foursquare to stand up in. Yous tin see in the video that while it's definitely tight, no ane is forced to molest anyone else and everyone can exhale.
But that'due south using all adults. The world's median age is 29, and the youngest billion humans tend to be quite fiddling. The second case brings us across the world to a random New Zealand uncomplicated school, where a teacher has decided to get cute and cram every bit many kids as she tin into a foursquare meter. She maxes out at a shocking 22 kids.
Putting these two performances together, it seems reasonable to say that 10 humans per foursquare meter is a safe estimate for what nosotros tin can utilize every bit our man-bunching metric. Ix adults in the square managed fine and the addition of children into the mix should be able to easily increase that total by 1 to 10 (yes, some adults are much larger than boilerplate, just others are tiny—the world's boilerplate developed is a not-that-big 62kg (137lb) person).
At ten people per square meter, nosotros tin fit 1,000 people in a 10m x 10m square. A basketball court is 28m x 15m, which means we can fit 4,200 people on 1, all in premises.
We tin can fit 54,000 people on an American football game field, which is large enough to hold the unabridged population of Liechtenstein or Monaco, and if nosotros aggrandize our field to the size of a soccer field—sorry, a football pitch—we can hold over 71,000 people, more than enough space to contain the population of Greenland.
Tiananmen Foursquare is pretty huge—880m x 500m or just nether half a square kilometer.
If it were empty, it could hold 4.4 million people, or the entire population of Croatia, Oman, Lebanese republic, Panama, Moldova, Uruguay, State of kuwait, Mongolia, or Lithuania.
A full square kilometer could fit x million people—the population of a megacity—and you could pack all 26 one thousand thousand Scandinavians—everyone in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark3—into one square mile.
Central Park, with an expanse of three.41 square km (one.iii sq mi), could easily hold the population of Australia, Morocco, Kingdom of saudi arabia, Republic of peru, Venezuela, Malaysia, Nepal, Mozambique or Syria. You could fit all xiii.ix million Jews into Central Park and nevertheless accept room for the population of Romania, Republic of chile, or holland. The entire human race in 5,000 BC, which historians estimate to exist between 5 – 20 million people, would fill up at most a little over half of Fundamental Park.
We're only getting started, so settle in.
Y'all could clasp all 320 meg Americans into a v.7km x 5.7km (three.5mi ten 3.5mi) square, which would take less than five hours to walk effectually.
And a foursquare 10km 10 10km (6.2mi x 6.2mi), or a minor isle about twice the size of Bermuda, could concord a billion people (which you could walk the perimeter of in most 8 hours). A slightly larger island, Martha's Vineyard, has an surface area of 226kmii and could fit all the world's Christians on information technology [insert your ain wisecrack hither]. Alternatively, Martha's Vineyard could fit the entire combined population of North America and S America…and withal have room for the entire population of Africa. Every bit for the earth'southward females, if they ever got annoyed with men and wanted to starting time a social club, they could hold their membership-wide meetings in the 360kmtwo Gaza Strip.
Anyhow, what we really want to know is how large a slice of land we'd need to concur everyone—all 7.3 billion of u.s.. And the answer is, a 27km x 27km (16.8mi x 16.8mi) foursquare.
That square is smaller than Bahrain. And on pinnacle of Africa, information technology would look like this:
The square is also smaller than New York City.
NYC has an area of 786 square km, or 303 sq mi, and the whole man race could fit within it—with room for another half a billion people. Specifically:
- Manhattan could fit 590 one thousand thousand people
- Brooklyn could fit one.38 billion people
- Queens could fit 2.83 billion people
- The Bronx could fit 1.09 billion people
- Staten Island could fit ane.51 billion people
So let's attempt it. First by geographic region:
How's everyone doing downwards there?
Great. Now, let'due south shift around and organize by religion:
And so that'due south how much footing space the human race takes up—but that'due south but talking nigh the living humans.
Scientists' estimates for the total number of humans who have ever lived4 tend to range from 90 to 110 billion people. The most common estimates are around 108 billion full humans. Using that supposition, a little under vii% of all people who have ever lived are alive right now:
We only had a Dinner Table discussion about which dead human we'd similar to bring dorsum to life—but what if nosotros brought all dead humans back? How much infinite would we need to brand room for them?
We'd need 10,800 square kilometers—a foursquare with a side of 103km (65mi)—which would easily fit inside Jamaica, Qatar, Kuwait, The Gambia, or Connecticut.
Standing into hypothetical earth, we could fit a trillion people in South Korea, Iceland, Republic of guatemala, or Cuba, and if we covered every square meter of the Globe's land with people, it would fit one.48 quadrillion people—200,000 times the current earth population. To end the job, let's embrace the entire surface of the Earth with people—including oceans—to bring the total people that could fit on an World-sized planet to a footling over five quadrillion people.iii
And that's all fine, only my grandfathers didn't fight in Earth War 2 and so I could write posts almost two-dimensional things. Time to go far the ring with the big boys.
7.3 billion humans in 3-dimensional configurations
Sticking with our 10 humans per foursquare meter of floor metric, we bring height into the equation using the worldwide average human top of 165cm (65in).4 So we can build ourselves a berth with a square meter base and a 1.65 meter height that volition fit 10 boilerplate humans. This gives us our 3D metric—.165m3/person, or 6.06 people per cubic meter.
When we put lots of people in iii-dimensional buildings, we'll practise information technology by building different superlative "floors"—some floors would be higher than 1.65m for taller people, others would be shorter than average for shorter people, but each person would exist on a flooring where the ceiling was just a few millimeters above their head, and the floors would average out to be 1.65m high each.
The Empire State Edifice has a volume of 1.05 million cubic meters, which when hollowed out and replaced with our new "floors" would hold 6.3 meg very unhappy people.
AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, is a huge domed structure with a volume of 2.94 million cubic meters. With the addition of floors, information technology could hold 17.6 million people. That'south big enough to fit the unabridged population of Dallas…plus the populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston.
The largest building in the world, volume-wise, is the Boeing Everett Factory in Washington Land. With a 900m x 495m base (which virtually exactly matches the dimensions of Tiananmen Square) and a ceiling over 33m loftier, the factory'due south volume is 13.3 million cubic meters—which nosotros could fit all the world'south French people into with room left over for all the Belgians every bit well (78.7 one thousand thousand person capacity).
Just if we're gonna fit all of u.s.a. into a single building, nix currently on Globe is going to work—we have to build information technology ourselves.
At .165 meters per person, we'll need a fiddling over i.2 billion cubic meters, or but over ane cubic kilometer (1.204km3 to be exact).5 This cubic building would have a side of i.07km (about 2/3 of a mile), giving it a base of about 1.1km—a little over double the size of the Boeing Factory base—and a height of 1,070m (3,511 anxiety), which is 29% taller than the Burj Khalifa, the world'due south tallest skyscraper. That's a large building, merely neither the base nor the height lone are unfathomable by modernistic architectural standards. Here's what it would look like if we built information technology in Manhattan (with other structures added for reference):
Somewhere in that building is yous. Somewhere else are all your friends. Somewhere in there is a xvi-year-old Cambodian girl and all her friends. Somewhere is a Somali pirate, his barber, and all his barber's friends. Every NBA player is in there, along with every rockstar, movie star, supermodel, and pol. Every bartender and construction worker and priest and lawyer and prisoner and princess and soldier and dentist are somewhere in that building, along with all 1.4 billion Chinese people, every blond person, and every member of ISIS.
The human race, which seems overwhelmingly large in one dimension when it's wrapping 55 times around the Earth or forming a circle that dwarfs the moon's orbit, seems much more manageable when it can fit inside Bahrain or New York City with room to spare and near quaint when organized neatly into a cube that would take you only 20 minutes to jog around.
And with that, our initial goal is accomplished. But what if, instead of ending this post here, we went just one step farther? After all that piece of work, who wants to stop now while there's withal so much empty space in all of our atoms?
vii.3 Billion Humans Compressed Downward to Their Atomic Nuclei
Every atom's dissimilar, simply a general ballpark rule is that an cantlet's diameter is about 100,000 times larger than the diameter of its nucleus, the thing that carries nearly all of the atom'due south mass. Translated into three dimensions, that means an atom's nucleus makes up merely around one quadrillionth of an cantlet's total volume. The way I visualize this is past imagining an atom to be a cubic kilometer—a hollow cube taller than the tallest skyscraper (around the size of our humanity cube higher up). This building is so large that if you were inside it, hanging from the ceiling, and you lot let go, it would have you most 15 seconds of complimentary autumn before you hit the ground. If y'all're continuing on 1 side of the base of operations, information technology would have y'all about 12 minutes to walk beyond to the other.
If that huge cube is an atom, somewhere in the centre is a i cmthree sugar cube—and that's the nucleus. And the atom's mass would be about exactly the mass of the sugar cube, which takes upwardly one quadrillionth of the total infinite. Just nearly all of the other 999,999,999,999,999 quadrillionths of the cantlet is massless, empty space.
Your torso'southward mass is the combined masses of the sugar cubes in the center of each of your trunk's atoms.
And so how large is the human race really? When we get rid of the empty space in all the atoms of all 7.three billion people, what are we left with?
An M&M.
Not fifty-fifty, actually. The volume of a human is about .0664 cubic meters, putting the combined volume of all humans at nigh 485 million cubic meters. When we reduce that to one quadrillionth of its size, we become .485 cubic centimeters. An M&M is .636cm3, about 30% too large. A Skittle is as well big too (.74cm3), as are a quarter (.809cm3) and a nickel (.689cmthree). It's pretty hard to find everyday objects every bit small equally .485cm3 (a US penny works, but at .433cmthree, falls but short of plumbing fixtures united states all in it).
And that's where nosotros'll cease things today. With an M&M weighing 450 1000000 tonnes—heavier than 75 Pyramids of Giza—that nosotros could all fit into if someone squished united states difficult enough.
___________
If you liked this post, hither are four more than posts in the Pointless Calculations category:
What Could Yous Purchase With $241 Trillion? More cubes. Golden ones this time.
What Does a Quadrillion Sour Patch Kids Expect Like? Candy cubes in infinite.
Putting the world's oceans, lakes, and rivers in cubes. H2o cubes.
What if all vii.one Billion People Moved to Tunisia? No cubes, but another post experimenting with the man population (less calumniating to the stick figures).
Source: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/7-3-billion-people-one-building.html
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