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G_j

(40,366 posts)
Wed May 30, 2018, 06:01 PM May 2018

All life on Earth, in one staggering chart

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas

Scientists estimated the mass of all life.

If everyone on the planet were to step on one side of a giant balance scale, and all the bacteria on Earth were to be placed on the other side, we’d shoot violently upward. That’s because all the bacteria on Earth combined are about 1,166 times more massive than all the humans.

Comparisons to other categories of life similarly demonstrate how very, very small we are. As a sweeping new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds, in a census sorting all the life on Earth by weight (measured in gigatons of carbon, the signature element of life on Earth), we make up less than 1 percent of life.

There are an estimated 550 gigatons of carbon of life in the world. A gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons. A metric ton is 1,000 kilograms, or about 2,200 pounds.



All life on Earth, in one chart

What you’ll see below is a kind of tower of life. Each large block of this tower represents a gigaton of life, and the blocks are grouped into broad kingdoms. There are the protists (think microscopic life like amoebae), archaea (single-celled organisms somewhat similar to bacteria), fungi (mushrooms and other types of fungus), bacteria (you’re familiar with these, right?), plants, and animals.

..check it out..
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All life on Earth, in one staggering chart (Original Post) G_j May 2018 OP
i love posts like this. Illuminating. Thanks. dameatball May 2018 #1
Thanks! Sophia4 May 2018 #2
Loved it rock May 2018 #3
Very cool! smirkymonkey May 2018 #4
I also read that the typical human being has RandomAccess May 2018 #5
That's right, though bacteria are far smaller than eukaryotic cells like ours muriel_volestrangler May 2018 #9
The small amount of wild mammals 😖 Duppers May 2018 #6
Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn G_j May 2018 #7
Thanks for the link...nt Wounded Bear May 2018 #8
If you could pile all the world's bacteria on one end of a seesaw... Orsino May 2018 #10
 

RandomAccess

(5,210 posts)
5. I also read that the typical human being has
Wed May 30, 2018, 09:02 PM
May 2018

more bacteria in his or her body than human body cells.

We couldn't survive without bacteria. Bacteria have even been discovered at the bottom of the ocean, at a volcanic vent.

muriel_volestrangler

(101,154 posts)
9. That's right, though bacteria are far smaller than eukaryotic cells like ours
Thu May 31, 2018, 11:00 AM
May 2018

so by weight, they're still a distinct minority. (Eukaryotic = plants, fungi, animals, protists)

Duppers

(28,094 posts)
6. The small amount of wild mammals 😖
Thu May 31, 2018, 09:00 AM
May 2018

"Animals are going extinct 1,000 to 10,000 faster than you’d expect if no humans lived on Earth...

The authors of the PNAS article estimate that the mass of wild land mammals is seven times lower than it was before humans arrived..."


We're killing them off. Pick up your guns, boys; let's go huntin'.


G_j

(40,366 posts)
7. Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn
Thu May 31, 2018, 09:50 AM
May 2018

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as study reveals billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Orsino

(37,428 posts)
10. If you could pile all the world's bacteria on one end of a seesaw...
Thu May 31, 2018, 11:16 AM
May 2018

...it would make a better president than Trump.

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