7 ms·

How does my math seem sketchy? If anything I was generous in my estimation of how many living organisms have ever existed.

gamblor956 4y ago
Their are trillions of microorganisms on and in the human body (10^13), and their are a several billion humans (10^10), so there are more than 10^23 living organisms just taking into account humans and their bacterial biomes. That doesn't include the several billion other fauna, or the unquantifable number of microorganisms living on/in them or in the water and soil. For example, a liter of water contains a million phytoplankton, half a million zooplankton, and over a billion bacteria. The ocean contains about 10^40 liters, which comes out to over 10^50 living organisms just in terms of bacteria, not including higher-order life forms (or non-living self-organizing organic constructs like viruses). If anything, you are grossly understating the amount of living organisms currently alive.
- jononomo 4y ago
  10^23 is a speck in the ocean compared to 10^50. There are only 10^90 elementary particles in the entire universe.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    That's just humans and their biota, dude. You're clearly ignoring the second paragraph, so I guess the problem with your math is simply that your ignoring everything that disagrees with your worldview. Also, physicians don't know how many elementary particles there are in the entire universe, since we don't actually know what the bulk of the entire universe is made of yet, so your 10^90 is clearly just made up.
    - jononomo 4y ago
      You took an example of the number of microorganisms in a liter of pond water, then multiplied it by all the liters of water in the ocean — but you won’t find the same number of microorganisms in a liter of salt water a mile deep beneath the arctic. So I think your math is a little sketchy. In any case, I’ll have to go back and find my source and look into how he did the calculation.
    - jononomo 4y ago
      As for how many elementary particles there are in the universe, consider that there are between 10^78 and 10^82 atoms in the universe, according to this website: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/which-greater-number-of-atoms-universe-or-number-of-chess-moves https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/which-greater-nu... "Titin is a multi-functional protein that behaves as a nonlinear spring in human muscles with its many domains unfolding and refolding in the presence of forces and giving muscles their elasticity. Titin is about 100 times longer than the average protein with its 33,423 amino acid polypeptide chain" (http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-the-average-protein/ http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-the-average-protein/) How many different ways are there to create a protein containing 33,423 amino acids? I will leave this calculation as an exercise for the reader, but as a starting point, suppose there are only 10 amino acids available -- that would yield 10^33,423 possible arrangements. But even an average protein would have more different possible arrangements than there are atoms on Earth. Given that there are only 10^16 seconds in a billion years, we can safely assume that mutating a protein ten times every second for a billion years will search less than a quadrillionth of the search space.
      - ajuc 4y ago
        1. again you're (mis)quoting universe size without understanding. The actual quote is "There are between 10^78 to 10^82 atoms in the OBSERVABLE universe". As in - "universe that is close enough to us that light from it can arrive to us before it expands away FTL". There is no reason to believe universe ends exactly as far from us as we can see. It would be a coincidence much more astounding than the fact that titin exists (it would mean Earth is exactly in the middle of the WHOLE universe and it's exactly the size for us to see everything). It would also mean gravity theory is wrong because with nothing outside of the observable universe - universe should be expanding slower because mean gravity would bring everything towards Earth. Basically it's not the case. 2. genetic code doesn't change only by 1-base pair at a time. There are duplications, inclusions, etc. I'm pretty sure you can find many duplicated fragments in the code for titin. 3. you have choosen your target (titin) without specifying the class that it belongs to. Maybe it only matters that it's long and the endings are kinda this shape? Let's say there's 10^25_000 different viable titin alternatives. No matter which we end up with - it works, and you wouldn't know if you were in these universes instead. It significantly changes the likelihood but you treat the titin as the only possibility. It's like being amazed that John Smith won the lottery - sure, it's unlikely that this exact person won. But it's pretty likely that SOMEONE wins the lottery. And you can only be amazed if you chose that person before the draw. In case of titin you select the winner after the draw and marvel at the unlikelihood. These comparisons are usually motivated ideologically and based on misunderstanding of both probability and universe.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    That's observable universe. There's no requirement for life to arise in observable universe. If it arose in any other part - that part would then be "observable".
- jononomo 4y ago
  According to this website https://headsup.scoutlife.org/many-atoms-world/ https://headsup.scoutlife.org/many-atoms-world/ there are 10^50 atoms on Earth, so I'm going to have dispute your claim that there are 10^50 bacteria on Earth!
- jononomo 4y ago
  Where did you come up with 10^40 liters of water in the ocean? According to this calculation, which seems persuasive to me, the "volume of the oceans is about 1.35 billion trillion liters" (https://mathblag.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/how-much-water-is-in-the-oceans/ https://mathblag.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/how-much-water-is-...) That comes to 1.35 x 1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000,000, which is on the order of 10^22.

gamblor956 4y ago

Their are trillions of microorganisms on and in the human body (10^13), and their are a several billion humans (10^10), so there are more than 10^23 living organisms just taking into account humans and their bacterial biomes. That doesn't include the several billion other fauna, or the unquantifable number of microorganisms living on/in them or in the water and soil. For example, a liter of water contains a million phytoplankton, half a million zooplankton, and over a billion bacteria. The ocean contains about 10^40 liters, which comes out to over 10^50 living organisms just in terms of bacteria, not including higher-order life forms (or non-living self-organizing organic constructs like viruses). If anything, you are grossly understating the amount of living organisms currently alive.

jononomo 4y ago
10^23 is a speck in the ocean compared to 10^50. There are only 10^90 elementary particles in the entire universe.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  That's just humans and their biota, dude. You're clearly ignoring the second paragraph, so I guess the problem with your math is simply that your ignoring everything that disagrees with your worldview. Also, physicians don't know how many elementary particles there are in the entire universe, since we don't actually know what the bulk of the entire universe is made of yet, so your 10^90 is clearly just made up.
  - jononomo 4y ago
    You took an example of the number of microorganisms in a liter of pond water, then multiplied it by all the liters of water in the ocean — but you won’t find the same number of microorganisms in a liter of salt water a mile deep beneath the arctic. So I think your math is a little sketchy. In any case, I’ll have to go back and find my source and look into how he did the calculation.
  - jononomo 4y ago
    As for how many elementary particles there are in the universe, consider that there are between 10^78 and 10^82 atoms in the universe, according to this website: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/which-greater-number-of-atoms-universe-or-number-of-chess-moves https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/which-greater-nu... "Titin is a multi-functional protein that behaves as a nonlinear spring in human muscles with its many domains unfolding and refolding in the presence of forces and giving muscles their elasticity. Titin is about 100 times longer than the average protein with its 33,423 amino acid polypeptide chain" (http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-the-average-protein/ http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-the-average-protein/) How many different ways are there to create a protein containing 33,423 amino acids? I will leave this calculation as an exercise for the reader, but as a starting point, suppose there are only 10 amino acids available -- that would yield 10^33,423 possible arrangements. But even an average protein would have more different possible arrangements than there are atoms on Earth. Given that there are only 10^16 seconds in a billion years, we can safely assume that mutating a protein ten times every second for a billion years will search less than a quadrillionth of the search space.
    - ajuc 4y ago
      1. again you're (mis)quoting universe size without understanding. The actual quote is "There are between 10^78 to 10^82 atoms in the OBSERVABLE universe". As in - "universe that is close enough to us that light from it can arrive to us before it expands away FTL". There is no reason to believe universe ends exactly as far from us as we can see. It would be a coincidence much more astounding than the fact that titin exists (it would mean Earth is exactly in the middle of the WHOLE universe and it's exactly the size for us to see everything). It would also mean gravity theory is wrong because with nothing outside of the observable universe - universe should be expanding slower because mean gravity would bring everything towards Earth. Basically it's not the case. 2. genetic code doesn't change only by 1-base pair at a time. There are duplications, inclusions, etc. I'm pretty sure you can find many duplicated fragments in the code for titin. 3. you have choosen your target (titin) without specifying the class that it belongs to. Maybe it only matters that it's long and the endings are kinda this shape? Let's say there's 10^25_000 different viable titin alternatives. No matter which we end up with - it works, and you wouldn't know if you were in these universes instead. It significantly changes the likelihood but you treat the titin as the only possibility. It's like being amazed that John Smith won the lottery - sure, it's unlikely that this exact person won. But it's pretty likely that SOMEONE wins the lottery. And you can only be amazed if you chose that person before the draw. In case of titin you select the winner after the draw and marvel at the unlikelihood. These comparisons are usually motivated ideologically and based on misunderstanding of both probability and universe.
- ajuc 4y ago
  That's observable universe. There's no requirement for life to arise in observable universe. If it arose in any other part - that part would then be "observable".
jononomo 4y ago
According to this website https://headsup.scoutlife.org/many-atoms-world/ https://headsup.scoutlife.org/many-atoms-world/ there are 10^50 atoms on Earth, so I'm going to have dispute your claim that there are 10^50 bacteria on Earth!
jononomo 4y ago
Where did you come up with 10^40 liters of water in the ocean? According to this calculation, which seems persuasive to me, the "volume of the oceans is about 1.35 billion trillion liters" (https://mathblag.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/how-much-water-is-in-the-oceans/ https://mathblag.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/how-much-water-is-...) That comes to 1.35 x 1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000,000, which is on the order of 10^22.