Originally Posted By: Paul
this is a huge planet !

there are only slightly below 7 billion people today.

if you were to place all of the 7 billion humans in a 1 meter square space , they would only occupy an area of 52 miles squared.


You are right about the amount of space that would be required to contain the people of the Earth, but you are overlooking the amount of space that is required to support those people. When talking about predators one of the things that is important is the range of each one. For example several years ago I read a story about the Florida Panther which said that the range for a single specimen was about 250 square miles (about 650 square kilometers). I don't know what the equivalent "range" would be for humans, but I have no doubt that it is pretty large. Keep in mind that our "range" includes land to grow our food, land to collect water, and land to dispose of our refuse. And when we multiply that range by 7 billion it gets to be pretty large. And on top of that we need to allow room for all the other life forms on the planet, since it turns out that we may need them a lot more than we think we do. So our space requirements are indeed crowding the planet.

Bill Gill

C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.