re: #323 freetoken

If everyone reproduced as much as the Duggers, a back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that it would take 24 generations before the mass of all humans surpassed the mass of the Earth.

With fast breeders we could do it in 5 centuries or so.

As a physical scientist I feel compelled to point out that humans cannot create mass. We can transform it from food to our waistlines, but there are in fact a finite number of atoms associated with the planet and I don’t think that we’re gaining more at a sufficient rate to allow humans to surpass the mass of the earth.

Thermodynamics says no cookie.