It took roughly four billion years for the first living bit of protoplasm, bred perhaps in an undersea volcanic vent or a warm pond, to grow and evolv

A Century of Human Detritus, Visualized

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2024-12-28 00:00:07

It took roughly four billion years for the first living bit of protoplasm, bred perhaps in an undersea volcanic vent or a warm pond, to grow and evolve into the 1.1 trillion tons of biomass that inhabit Earth today. But all of that is outweighed by the plastic, concrete and other material that humans have produced in the last century alone in the form of everything from roads and skyscrapers to cars, cellphones, paper towels and bobblehead dolls.

That was the takeaway of a meticulous global inventory of stuff, natural and unnatural, compiled in 2018 by Yinon M. Bar-On, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, and his colleagues. They synthesized data from a vast number of scientific studies, from large global measurements to rough guesstimates. One figure widely quoted by pest control companies: There are 1,000 pounds of termites for every human on Earth. If you like big numbers, the 2018 report is delicious reading.

Recently, Brice Ménard, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, and Nikita Shtarkman, a computer scientist and graphic artist, visualized Dr. Bar-On’s research. The two had previously collaborated on an online map of the universe, which has been viewed more than a million times.