Here's an old, old, question, but this time with a surprise twist. The question is — and I bet you asked it when you were 8 years old and sitting on a beach: Which are there more of — grains of sand on the Earth or stars in the sky?
Obviously, grains and stars can't be counted, not literally. But you can guestimate.
Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of grains of sand.
They said, if you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we're speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.
That's a lot of grains.
OK, so how about stars? Well, to my amazement, it turns out that when you look up, even on a clear and starry night, you won't see very many stars. Blatner says the number is a low, low "several thousand," which gives the sand grain folks a landslide victory. But we're not limiting ourselves to what an ordinary stargazer can see.
Our stargazer gets a Hubble telescope and a calculator, so now we can count distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we've ever recorded in the sky, and boom! Now the population of stars jumps enormously, to 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a 2003 estimate), so that we've got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars.
So that makes stars the champions of numerosity, no?
Ummm, no. This is when Blatner hits us with his sucker punch. Yes, he says, the number of stars in the heavens is "an unbelievably large number," but then, very matter-of-factly, he adds that you will find the same number of molecules "in just ten drops of water."
Say what?
Let me repeat: If you took 10 drops of water (not extra-big drops, just regular drops, I'm presuming) and counted the number of H2O molecules in those drops, you'd get a number equal to all the stars in the universe.
This is amazing to me. For some reason, when someone says million, billion or trillion, I see an enormous pile of something, a grand scene, great sweeps of desert sand, twirling masses of stars. Big things come from lots of stuff; little things from less stuff. That seems intuitive.
But that's wrong. Little things, if they're really little, can pile up just like big things, and yes, says Blatner, water molecules "really are that small."
So next time I look up at the sky at all those stars, I will be impressed, of course, by the great numbers that are out there. But I will remind myself that at the other end of the scale, in the nooks and crannies of the physical world, in the teeniest of places, there are equally vast numbers of teenier things.
We are surrounded by vastness, high and low, and either way, as Blatner's book says, we "can't handle the biggitude."
David Blatner's forthcoming book is called Spectrums: Our Mind-Boggling Universe, from Infinitesmal to Infinity.
Forget wheels or doors, there’s a new debate taking over social media and this one might be even worse.
Internet users across the world have been debating the same bizarre question this week: Are there more doors or wheels in the world?
It all started when a random Twitter user asked the question alongside a poll which went viral.
Then, the debate blew up on TikTok as people grew divided and couldn’t agree on an answer.
Now, there’s a new debate stumping internet users. Here we go again…
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Grass or hair debate goes viral
A new question has emerged from the viral wheels or doors debate: Is there more grass or hair in the world?
Internet users are debating whether there are more blades of grass or hair follicles in the world, and it’s causing quite a stir.
It’s a question you’ve probably never thought about in your life and the answer is completely impossible to work out, which is what makes it so great.
Thankfully, this one is a little simpler than wheels or doors because there’s no confusion as to what counts as a wheel and what counts as a door.
People are arguing about the answer on TikTok, but there seems to be a clear winner.
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New debate: are there more blades of grass or strands of hair? I’m confused.
— Sai Kulkarni (@sai_kulk) March 9, 2022
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you’ve got the doors vs wheels debate but have u seen the strands of hair vs blades of grass debate 😂😂🤯
— Chlo🕊 (@chloeknowlesxx) March 10, 2022
People are convinced it’s hair
Most people are convinced that the answer must be hair, with one person writing: “At first I thought grass ’cause like the world is big but myself and the dog would have more hair than grass at our house so now I’m team hair. When does this end?”
“Ok next debate… are there more grass needles or hair follicles in the world? I vote hair follicles. Think of all the animals and hair all over one’s body,” said another.
A third person added: “Someone just argued blades of grass vs strands of hair and I’m losing my mind over it. It’s gotta be hair bc 7 billion people not to mention all the animals and human hair wigs? Like do barbie dolls count?”
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With 7.7 billion people in the world (who almost all have hair) and green spaces disappearing at a rapid rate due to urbanisation, the logical answer certainly does seem to be hair – but we’ll never know for sure!
Others have had enough
Whilst some people are fully invested in the wheels or doors and grass or hair debates, others have had enough.
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i’m always down for a pointless debate but the wheels vs. doors topic is getting so annoying 😭
— noshin (@nothinnoshin) March 11, 2022
You can’t scroll through TikTok right now without seeing people argue their cases and it is getting rather annoying.
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i do not care if there are more wheels or doors. pls stop putting those videos on my fyp
— oli 🐚 (@sycamoreivy) March 11, 2022
People could barely cope with one silly debate let alone two.
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i can barely cope with the wheels and doors debate now i have to think about blades of grass vs strands of hair????
— dais🤍 (@daisyprestleton) March 10, 2022
It was funny at first, but it’s definitely time for the debates to stop now.
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i dont give a damn if there are more doors or wheels in the world. stop asking
— tony kesserwani (@tonykesserwani) March 10, 2022
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