8 billion is a big number. But how big?
The United Nations said we’d have 8 billion people on the planet on November 15, 2022. That’s a lot of people!
Help for Understanding 8 Billion
Here are some helpful ways to think about the size of 8 billion and the magnitude of the global population.
• Take 8 billion steps, and you’d circle the Earth 139 times.
• If you’re 8 billion seconds old, you’re 254 years old. (Does that make your knees hurt?!)
• Stack 8 billion pennies, and you’d make a tower 6,960 miles high. Lay that stack of pennies on its side, and it would cross the continental U.S. three times!
• Let’s say counting was your full-time job, so you did it 8 hours every day. It would take you 761 years to count to 8 billion.
• Do you like bananas? It would take you 200 lifetimes to eat 8 billion bananas.
• Crowd 8 billion people together, and they’d almost cover the land area of Alaska. And where would the moose go?
Image credit: World map (ID 1249786 © Jurgen Ziewe | Dreamstime.com)
