We love a good truth, and Redditor kiwi2703 has one of the most interesting—and strange—we’ve heard in a while. They decided to get creative with some math to answer a question you may never have considered: how big would the resulting glob of goo be if all the humanity in the world were merged together? Yes, it seems strange, but the human goo ball isn’t as large as you may assume.
The human goo sphere is around 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) wide, based on a global population of 7.88 billion people, a human density of 985 kg/m3 (about 61.5 lb/ft3), and an average human weight of 62 kg (nearly 137 lbs). That’s a meatball the size of three Eiffel Towers, or nearly two-thirds of a mile in diameter. Alternatively, as kiwi2703 shown in a great depiction, the spherical could easily fit inside Central Park.
Though the concept of a human meatball is a little revolting, the activity itself is fascinating. For all the change that humanity has brought to the earth, we are only a little part of it. This isn’t the first time someone has wondered about the amount of space humans occupy on Earth. In 2015, it was demonstrated that the entire world’s population—at the time, 7.3 billion people—could fit within the confines of New York City.
So, how big will this human meatball get in the next few years? Redditor IntoAMuteCrypt came up with a solution using data from the World Bank. “According to the World Bank and various other sources, the global population is growing at a pace of 1.05 percent per year. For the sake of simplicity, let’s round up the sphere’s diameter to 1km (remember, it’s 1km wide, not 1km in radius), and assume that the average mass of a human remains constant.
The population is multiplied by 1.0105 throughout a year, therefore the volume changes by the same amount. Because the radius is proportional to the volume’s cube root, it is multiplied by 1.0035. (rounded off). Over the course of a year, our 500-meter-radius sphere expands to 501.7439-meter-radius sphere. When converted to micrometers per second, it equals little about 16 micrometers per second. “Not much, huh?”
Isn’t that some interesting food for thought?
Did you know that if the whole world’s population was crushed up, a human meatball the size of Central Park could be created?
@hankgreen1 Thank you to Reddit user kiwi2703 for this cursed image. #learnontiktok #tiktokpartner #askhank ♬ original sound – Hank Green
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