Thursday Reflection: Humility
The blue-green swirly circle above represents the mass of the Earth.
See that tiny little red dot in the middle? That represents the mass of the entire human population (estimated 6.6 billion). And, actually, to truly represent it in scale, you wouldn’t be able to see the dot at all on this small of a circle. The dot would have to be fractions of a pixel in size!
You see, the mass of the entire human population on Earth is just 1.5 trillionth of Earth’s total mass.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking: What about surface area?
Okay, the Earth’s surface area is about 196,935,000 square miles, of which 30% is land, leaving about 59,080,500 square miles of land surface area.
Now, if we imagine all the world’s population standing together, each of us occupying approximately 2 square feet of space, here is what we would have:
The green represents the land surface area of the Earth, and the tiny red dot represents the entire human population standing together. That tiny red dot is just 1 pixel in size and to be more accurate, it would have to be 8/10 of a pixel in size to be truly representative.
And, just for kicks, how about we give each person on Earth a one-story 2,000 square foot home. How might that look if we put all the homes next to each other?
Just something to think about!
SOURCES:
Mass of All the People on Earth: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/DanielTouger.shtml (site viewed May 14, 2008)
Google Search: “world population“: “Population: 6,602,224,175 (July 2007 est.)” (searched May 14, 2008)
Google Search: “mass of the earth“: “mass of Earth = 5.9742 × 1024 kilograms” (searched May 14, 2008)
Yahoo Answers: What is the surface area of the Earth in square miles?: 196,935,000 square miles, 30% of which is land. (site viewed May 14, 2008)
Well what if every person also had a condo on Cape Cod? Yeah, I thought so. (I have no idea what I’m trying to say here, just looking to pad my lead in most comments evar!)
That could be done. But, I wouldn’t want to ride those elevators!!!
“Just something to think about!”
Ok what are we thinking about this time.
Your stoplight is broke-
If there are 3 greens when does the other fella get to go?