A Mathematician Calculated The Size of a Giant Meatball Made of Every Human (sciencealert.com)
- Reference: 0178002643
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/11/0050238/a-mathematician-calculated-the-size-of-a-giant-meatball-made-of-every-human
- Source link: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mathematician-calculated-the-size-of-a-giant-meatball-made-of-every-human
> "If you blended all 7.88 billion people on Earth into a fine goo (density of a human = 985 kg/m3, average human body mass = 62 kg), you would end up with a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide," Reddit contributor kiki2703 wrote in [2]a post ... Reasoning the density of a minced human to be 985 kilograms per cubic meter (62 pounds per cubic foot) is a fair estimate, given past efforts have judged our jiggling sack of grade-A giblets to average out in the ballpark of [3]1 gram per cubic centimeter , or roughly the same as water. And in mid-2021, the global population was just around 7.9 billion, give or take.
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mathematician-calculated-the-size-of-a-giant-meatball-made-of-every-human
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/p0qws3/self_if_you_blended_all_788_billion_people_on/
[3] https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/50.6.1282
That is a lot of Soylent Green (Score:2)
Once dried of course.
Published in the JIR (Score:2)
Certainly published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results .
Re: (Score:2)
Or the journal of irresponsible results
That's not news (Score:1)
And not new either.
Re: (Score:2)
John Brunner's 1968 novel [1]Stand on Zanzibar [wikipedia.org]
The title is an allusion to a thought experiment in which it was calculated that all the human beings in the world could fit shoulder to shoulder on the Isle of Wight; given population growth, Brunner expanded this to the island of Zanzibar.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar
Re: (Score:2)
Stand on Zanzibar is perhaps the most prophetic sci-fi novel ever.
We must now... (Score:2)
...make this meatball. It is our purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
For his noodliness. Ramen!
Volume (Score:2)
> the resulting meatball would form a sphere just under 1 kilometer wide -- small enough to fit inside Central Park
Does Central Park (assuming NYC) have a "volume"? I looked it up and it's not 1km wide, but it's longer than 1km long, so how does this 2D rectangle to 3D sphere comparison work?
Re: Volume (Score:2)
The article has a picture. The edges of the meatball stick over the edge of the park, but only once you get to an altitude higher than the surrounding buildings.
Which is it? (Score:2)
7.88 or 8.2 billion?
And more importantly, how long at what heat (gas or electric oven) for the meatball to be well done?
Visualization? (Score:2)
Can someone do a visualization of humans getting dumped into a grinder over Central Park and forming into a meatball?
A "Mathematician"... (Score:3)
Yeah, right, everyone knows that what mathematicians do is do trivial arithmetic on their pocket calculator. And Reddit is well-known for being the primary place where mathematicians publish their research results. :-(
Not nearly as bad as a mole of moles (Score:4, Interesting)
XKCD: [1]https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/ [xkcd.com]
[1] https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
How many cans of spam does that make? (Score:1)
It's not exactly the prime cuts of meat. But if its what our alien overlords want, who am I to stand in their way.
Very for help (Score:2)
Is everything ok at home?
Breadcrumbs? (Score:2)
Did this mathematician consider the impact of the breadcrumbs on the weight and volume of a meatball? Or is he doing calculations for a "bad" meatball? Hmm, meatballs made of humans. Definitely a "bad" meatball.
Similar calculation (Score:2)
I did a similar calculation for oil. If you collected all the unrefined oil consumed by the United States in one day into a cube what would it look like? I no longer remember the exact figures, but a visual in my mind is clear. Imagine a 100 yard football field in the US. The cube is hovering above the field: a huge black mass of oil. The cube would be roughly 40% larger than the end zone lines.
Ball (solid) or sphere (hollow)? (Score:2)
The article and summary mix both shapes.
"To serve man" (Score:2)
That's a spicy meatball!
Of course! (Score:3)
We call that the Soylent Green meatball.