The mass of the structures produced by man has now become greater than the mass of all the living on earth. Find out in this interactive infographic.
The mass of all living organisms on earth, from bacteria to elephants and sequoies, is enormous: 1,100 gt (gigatonnellate, or billions of tons), counting the weight of all organisms excluding water. But the mass of what created the man came to overcome it, with a total weight of 1,300 gt.
This was shown by the animated infographic above/below, created by Brice Ménard, a physical of Johns Hopkins University, and Nikita Shurtkman, IT and artist. In the Biocubes.net project they depict the masses of the living and human production materials such as cubes whose size can be compared.
Small, but many. Among the kingdoms of the living, the plants are the bulk of the biomass with 900gt; The bacteria, tiny but numerous and present in all environments, weigh 140 gt. Then they come mushrooms (24 gt), microorganisms such as archeei (14 GT) and protists (8 GT), finally the animals (5.2 GT). Viruses (0.2 GT), composed of organic material, but considered outside the kingdoms of the living, have a minimum contribution to the biomass. Among the animals, going in detail, marine arthropods dominate (including crustaceans, for example) with 1.8 GT and fish with 1.4 GT. Humans are “only” 0.12 GT, however about 10 times more than the mass of all terrestrial mammals (0.014 GT).
The mass of the materials produced by man, from bricks to the asphalt to iron, is however greater than the biomass and as seen in the infographic the bulk of what exists has now accumulated from 1900 onwards.
