What is the maximum number of people able to accommodate Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Currently, writes Money.ro, 7.25 billion people live on the planet, their number is constantly growing. Every five years, the world's population increases by about one million more people. The current population of the planet is ten times greater than 400 years ago. And just 50 years ago, 2.5 billion people lived on Earth. Improved living conditions and the quality of health care have increased life expectancy as well as increased resistance to disease, resulting in a population explosion that was unimaginable a few hundred years ago. In addition, the birth rate in some areas of the world continues to be high.

In 40 years, the world's population could reach 30 billion

Studies conducted by scientists show that if there are no significant changes, then in the next 40 years the number of inhabitants of the Earth may exceed 20 or even 30 billion people. The saddest thing is that in such conditions our planet can become so impoverished that the population risks being left without water, food and energy supplies. Other researchers, however, are more moderate in their estimates and believe that the world's population will increase to about 10.5 billion by 2050. One way or another, the problem of the limited resources that the planet has is already there. A quite logical question arises: how many people can our planet withstand, while providing them with normal living conditions?

Carl Safina, author of The View from a Lazy Point of View. A natural year in an unnatural world,” answers this question with the word “depends.” “Depends on lifestyle. If everyone receives 800 kg of grain a year, like the Americans, then the earth can bear 2.5 billion people. Problem: We passed this barrier in 1950. The earth can bear 10 billion people if they live like Indians. Problem: All Indians want to live like Americans,” wrote Carl Safina in an article published in the Huffington Post.

It takes four planets to live like Americans

So much wood will be used to build houses alone that the forests of Indonesia, Myanmar, eastern Russia and Papua New Guinea will disappear before 2025, along with a number of birds, insects and monkeys, the scientist believes. At the same time, the cited author assures, for the same density of cars as in the USA, China will need to produce 30% more cars than there are now in the world. They will use the amount of fuel equal to 98 million barrels of oil per day. To date, humanity produces an average of 85 million barrels of "black gold" per day.

According to American biologist Joel Coen of Rockefeller University, in his book on the subject, it takes 900 tons of water to grow 1 ton of wheat. In order to survive, humanity needs vast areas to produce food, clothing, medicines, Construction Materials, as well as enough for all residents clean air and clean water. According to his calculations, on average, 2.1 hectares of land with water are needed in order to provide one person with everything necessary. If this person lives by US standards, he needs 10 hectares, which means that in order to provide all earthlings with the same standards as the Americans, we will need 4 more planets like Earth, writes The Guardian.

Social catastrophe: in a few decades or centuries?

Viorel Bedescu, a professor at the Bucharest Polytechnic University, believes that if the world's population grows to 9 billion by 2050, this figure is not close to the limit of the planet's capabilities. The Romanian professor and Richard Cathcart, a consulting geographer from Burbank in California, repeated Fremlin's calculations together using more modern thermodynamic models. Assuming that each person radiates an average of 120 watts of heat and that life will become very unpleasant if the average temperature on the Earth's surface rises too high, the researchers say that the Earth can support 1.3 quadrillion people without overheating. The two researchers acknowledge, however, that the Earth's resources may be depleted long before population reaches its theoretical peak.

In 2011, the population of our planet passed the mark of 7,000,000,000 inhabitants. Today, the Earth is home to approximately 7,300,000,000 people. Let's try to present this impressive figure in a more visual form.

If, for example, you were to take one dry grain of rice for every inhabitant of the earth, you could fill with these grains a cube with a side of 6.1 m, which is approximately the size of a two-story house.

What if you swap rice for sand? AT this case it all depends on what kind of sand you decide to use. 7.3 billion large grains of sand (about 2 mm in diameter) can fill a cubic room with a side of 4 m. With the same number of grains of sand with a diameter of 0.25 mm, you can fill cardboard box medium size (with sides 46 cm). 7,300,000,000 grains of sand with a diameter of 0.0625mm can almost completely fill a 2-liter soda bottle.

With 7.3 billion steps, you could circle the Earth 150 times (at a walking speed of two steps per second, it would take you 115 years).

7,300,000,000 people lined up

Have you ever thought about what would happen if all the inhabitants of the Earth lined up in one line? Imagine that we have the opportunity to organize such an event.

We will start compiling a live chain right on the equator, not far from the capital of Ecuador - the city of Quito. And we'll put Carlos first.

The second on the equator line will be Daniela, the third - Andrea. In our chain, people are located as close as possible to each other. Assume that adding each additional person lengthens the row on average by about 30 cm.

We continue to build a living chain, building bridges across the oceans and tunneling through the mountains. Finally, the last member stands directly in front of Carlos and the circle is completed. In order to encircle the Earth along the equator, 131,000,000 people were enough for us - less than 2% of the world's population. Thus, if desired, we can do this 54 more times.

However, we got a ring of people, when the original task was to line them up. Let's try to approach the matter differently.

Carlos will be the first to take his place. Daniela will stand on his shoulders, and Andrea, in turn, on the shoulders of Daniele. As you probably already guessed, we will make an attempt to build a tower of people.

The average human height is 165 cm, but since people will stand on each other's shoulders, the height of the structure will increase by about 134 cm on average with the addition of each new member.

Our tower gradually grows, and at some point we reach the moon. To do this, it took us 286,000,000 people, that is, only 4% of the total population of the Earth. So, we simply have to continue building.

When the last member takes his position, the height of the tower is 9,800,000 km. This means that we have covered a quarter of the distance to Venus, a fifth of the distance to Mars and one fifteenth of the distance to the Sun.

What if all the inhabitants of our planet stood side by side and joined hands, forming a circle? Suppose that with the addition of each subsequent participant, the length of the chain increases by about 91 cm.

After all people are in their places, measurements can be taken. The diameter of the resulting circle is 2,100,000 km, and its circumference is 6,600,000 km.

While we are all holding hands and dying in space without space suits, we have the opportunity to admire our home planet, which, when viewed from this distance, is approximately the size of the moon when viewed from Earth.

How many people can stand on one square meter? Obviously, the answer to this question depends on what kind of people we are talking about. So, for example, in a square with a side of 1 meter, a group of nine bored Canadian journalists managed to accommodate.

However, only adults took part in this experiment. By replacing them with children, you can achieve truly impressive results. In an experiment conducted in one of the New Zealand primary schools, on one square meter there are 22 people.

And first, let's see how many inhabitants of the Earth can accommodate a basketball court, the length of which is 28 m, and the width is 15 m. Having carried out some simple calculations, we get a very impressive result- 4200 people.

However, 54,000 people can be on the American football field at the same time. Thus, it can accommodate the entire population of Monaco or Liechtenstein. If you want to bring all the inhabitants of Greenland together, you should go to a football field that can accommodate 71,000 people.

Tiananmen Square in China is 880 meters long and 500 meters wide:

If there were no buildings on it, it could accommodate 4,400,000 people, or the population of countries such as Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, Panama, Moldova, Lithuania, Uruguay or Mongolia.

There can be 10,000,000 people on one square kilometer, 26,000,000 people on one square mile. All the inhabitants of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark could be accommodated in the territory, which is indicated in the diagram below by a red square:

Central Park (Central Park) in New York, with an area of ​​3.41 square kilometers, can easily accommodate the population of Australia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Venezuela, Malaysia, Nepal, Mozambique or Syria. All Jews could be accommodated here, after which there would still be enough space for all the inhabitants of Chile, Romania or the Netherlands. If Central Park had existed in 5000 BC, the entire human race could have settled in it without any problems (according to historians, at that time the population of the Earth was from 5 to 20 million people).

To accommodate 320,000,000 Americans, a square with a side of 5.7 km would be enough, which can be circumnavigated on foot in less than 5 hours. By increasing the side of the square to 10 km, you could accommodate 1,000,000,000 people in it. It would take you about 8 hours to get around this crowd of people.

Located in the United States, the island of Martha's Vineyard is able to accommodate all the Christians of the world. Or, alternatively, the entire population can be accommodated here. North America, South America and Africa.

And if all the women of the world decided to create their own club, the entrance to which would be ordered to men, they could use the Gaza Strip as a meeting place.

We finally come to the question of what size square can accommodate the entire population of the Earth. Answer: a square with a side of 27 kilometers and an area of ​​729 square kilometers. This is smaller than the area of ​​Bahrain. If all the inhabitants of our planet suddenly found themselves in the Gambia, the smallest state in the continental part of Africa, from above it could look something like this:

The population of the Earth could be accommodated in New York (moreover, in the city after that there would be room for another 500,000,000 people). Manhattan can accommodate 590,000,000 people, Brooklyn 1,380,000,000, Queens 2,830,000,000, The Bronx 1,090,000,000, and Staten Island 1,510,000,000.

Let's try to settle in New York all the inhabitants of the planet, based on their belonging to a particular region:

"How did all these people get here?"

Now let's categorize people according to religion:

Until now, we have only talked about those people who inhabit the Earth today. But what if we had to find a place to house all the people who have ever lived on our planet?

To be honest, it would not be too difficult to cope with this task either. 108,000,000,000 people (according to scientists, about the same number of people lived or live now on Earth) could be accommodated in Qatar, Kuwait, Gambia, Jamaica or even Connecticut.

1,000,000,000,000 people could be located in South Korea, Iceland, Guatemala or Cuba. It would take 1,480,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion 480 trillion) people to cover the whole land with people. This is 200,000 times the current population of the planet. Finally, to fill the entire surface of the Earth, including the oceans, it would take a little more than 5,000,000,000,000,000 people.

But we still haven't used the third dimension. It's time to do it.

7,300,000,000 people in one cubic building

We know that the average height of a person is 165 cm, and ten average people fit on one square meter. Based on this information, it is not difficult to calculate that one cubic meter of space can accommodate 6.06 people.

When placing people in 3D structures, we will provide them with "rooms" where the distance from floor to ceiling is equal to the person's height.

The volume of the 103-story Empire State Building, located in New York, is 1,050,000 cubic meters. Thus, this skyscraper could accommodate 6,300,000 extremely disgruntled people.

AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, has a volume of 2,940,000 cubic meters. If desired, it could accommodate 17,600,000 people, which corresponds to the combined population of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Dallas itself.

The largest building in the world, the Boeing Everett Factory, is 900 meters long, 495 meters wide and 33 meters high. Its volume is thus 13,300,000 cubic meters. The factory could accommodate all the French and Belgians combined.

However, if we want to gather all of humanity in one building, we need to build a building with a volume of 1,200,000,000 cubic meters, or just over 1 cubic kilometer. And it is worth noting that theoretically such a building can be built today. The image below shows how it would look in Manhattan (other large structures have been added for comparison):

Somewhere in this building you and all your friends. Somewhere around here is also a 16-year-old Cambodian girl with her friends. The Somali pirate, the Somali pirate's hairdresser and all the friends of the Somali pirate's hairdresser are also somewhere inside. Rock stars, priests, NBA players, builders, bartenders, soldiers, prosecutors, lawyers, blondes, brunettes, Chinese, Germans, Australians...

Everybody is here.

The population of the Earth seems simply huge when we line up all people in a chain whose diameter exceeds the diameter of the lunar orbit. However, the realization of the possibility of placing all the inhabitants of the planet in the territory of Bahrain or New York makes one wonder if this is a lot - 7,300,000,000 people? “Packing” humanity into a cubic building that would take you 20 minutes to run around, and completely allows you to look at the issue from a completely different angle.

This could have ended if not for one “but” - there is still too much unused space in our atoms.

7,300,000,000 people compressed at the atomic level

The average diameter of an atom is 100,000 times the diameter of its nucleus. The volume of an atom, therefore, exceeds the volume of the nucleus by 1,000,000,000,000,000 times. If we imagined the atom as a hollow cubic structure, we would have another huge building (about the same size as the one in which we planned to populate humanity).

If this cube is an atom, then a cube of sugar with a volume of 1 cubic centimeter in its center is a nucleus. And the mass of this piece of sugar almost completely contains the mass of the cube. In other words, 999,999,999,999,999 cubic centimeters of volume inside an atom weighs next to nothing. It's practically empty space.

The mass of the human body is thus almost entirely concentrated in one quadrillionth of its volume. What do we get by getting rid of empty space?

To be more precise, the volume of humanity will be even smaller. After compression, it will occupy a space equal to 0.485 cubic centimeters, while the volume of M&M dragees is 0.636 cubic centimeters.

So if someone says that there is too little space on Earth, he simply did not try to make room for real.

Recently, scientists have calculated the maximum number of people that the biosphere can withstand. On the one hand, the forecast turned out to be optimistic - even if the population size Homo sapiens reaches 10 billion people, hunger can still be avoided. However, at the current rate of population growth, this milestone may soon be overcome.

"The strength of mankind is so much greater than the strength of the Earth, spent on supporting its existence, that the human race must be overtaken by premature death - in one form or another." These ominous words philosopher Thomas Malthus wrote in late XVIII century in his essay on how he sees the future of mankind.

Humanity's irresistible urge to reproduce, according to Malthus, will inevitably lead to overpopulation of the planet, the destruction of all resources and death from starvation. To what maximum in the "support of the existence" of mankind can the Earth reach? And how right is Malthus in his vision of our future?

Maximum " throughput"the planet, according to modern scientists, is nine to ten billion people. Sociobiologist Edward Wilson bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources. First, the number fresh water limited. And secondly, the Earth can no longer produce the same amount of food as 200 years ago. Even with maximum efficiency, that is, if absolutely all the grain grown will go to people and not to livestock (which is an inefficient way of converting plant energy into food energy), there are restrictions in the distribution of the crop.

“If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving the livestock with little or no grain, 1.4 billion hectares of arable land could feed 10 billion people,” Wilson cites his calculations. The harvest from these hectares would amount to two billion tons of grain per year. This is enough for 10 billion herbivorous citizens, but omnivores could feed four times less with such an amount of grain. With so much of the world's grain harvest going to feed livestock and poultry, two billion tons of grain would barely cover the needs of the 2.5 billion meat-eaters and those who end up eating them.

Ten billion people is the level at which there will still be no squabbling over a piece of bread. And this is the extreme limit. It is unrealistic to transfer everyone to plant foods - many are not going to give up meat - therefore, we can already say with confidence now: the Earth will not be able to feed ten billion people.

Population biologist Doel Cohen of Columbia University in New York adds that there are a number of other factors limiting the planet's ability to cycle nitrogen, the rate of carbon dioxide recycling in the atmosphere, ensuring enough phosphorus, and so on. Even if the entire world's population could be converted to vegetarianism, we could easily die out due to lack of oxygen. How exactly humanity will affect the atmosphere is not yet known for sure - the volume of emissions is rather big, but more and more methods are being developed to help avoid turning the Earth into a giant greenhouse. "The truth is, no one knows when and at what population level the limit will be reached," says Cohen.

The seven billionth inhabitant of the planet was born a month ago. The United Nations predicts that the 10 billionth baby will be born in 2100. However, in almost 90 years, humanity can turn around in the opposite direction, scientists say. The trend is that families are becoming smaller and smaller in composition. Comparing data from 230 countries since 1950, the researchers concluded that in most countries, the birth rate has been steadily falling, says Gerhard Heilig, head of the UN's Office of Population Estimates and Projections.

Image copyright Thinkstock

Does the Earth have enough resources to support a rapidly growing human population? Now it is over 7 billion. What is the maximum number of inhabitants, above which the sustainable development of our planet will no longer be possible? The correspondent undertook to find out what the researchers think about this.

Overpopulation. With this word modern politics wince; in discussions about the future of planet Earth, he is often referred to as the "elephant in the room."

Often, a growing population is spoken of as the biggest threat to the existence of the Earth. But is it right to consider this problem in isolation from other contemporary global challenges? And is it really so threateningly many people live on our planet now?

• What do giant cities suffer from?
• Seva Novgorodtsev about overpopulation of the Earth
• Obesity is more dangerous than overcrowding

It is clear that the Earth does not increase in size. Its space is limited, and the resources necessary to sustain life are finite. Food, water and energy may simply not be enough for everyone.

It turns out that demographic growth is a real threat to the well-being of our planet? Not at all necessary.

"The problem is not the number of people living on the planet, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of consumption," says David Satterthwaite, senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

In support of his thesis, he cites a consonant statement by the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that "there are enough [resources] in the world to satisfy the needs of every person, but not universal greed."

The global effect of a multi-billion increase in urban population could be much smaller than we think

Until recently, the number of representatives living on Earth modern look human (Homo sapiens) was relatively small. Just 10 thousand years ago, no more than a few million people lived on our planet.

It wasn't until the early 1800s that the human population reached a billion. And two billion - only in the 20s of the twentieth century.

Currently, the world's population is over 7.3 billion people. According to UN forecasts, by 2050 it could reach 9.7 billion, and by 2100 it is expected to exceed 11 billion.

Population has only begun to grow rapidly in the last few decades, so we do not yet have historical examples on which to base our predictions about possible consequences this growth in the future.

In other words, if it is true that more than 11 billion people will live on our planet by the end of the century, our current level of knowledge does not allow us to say whether sustainable development is possible with such a population - simply because there has not yet been precedents in history.

However, we can get a better picture of the future if we analyze where the most significant population growth is expected in the coming years.

The problem is not the number of people living on Earth, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of their consumption of non-renewable resources

David Satterthwaite says that most of the demographic growth in the next two decades will occur in the megacities of those countries where the level of income of the population at the current stage is assessed as low or medium.

At first glance, an increase in the number of inhabitants of such cities, even if by several billion, should not have serious consequences on a global scale. This is due to historically low levels of urban consumption in low- and middle-income countries.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are a good indication of how high a city's consumption can be. “We know about cities in low-income countries that emissions of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) and its equivalents are less than a tonne per person per year,” says David Satterthwaite. high level income values ​​of this indicator range from 6 to 30 tons.

Residents of more economically prosperous countries pollute the environment to a much greater extent than people living in poor countries.

However, there are exceptions. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, a high-income country, while Porto Allegre is in Brazil, an upper-middle income country. Both cities have a high standard of living, but emissions (on a per capita basis) are relatively low in volume.

According to the scientist, if we look at the lifestyle of one single person, the difference between rich and poor categories of the population will be even more significant.

There are many low-income urban dwellers whose consumption is so low that it has little to no effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

When the Earth's population reaches 11 billion, the additional burden on its resources may be relatively small.

However, the world is changing. And it's entirely possible that low-income megacities will see carbon emissions rise soon.

There is also concern about the desire of people in poor countries to live and consume at levels that are now considered normal for high-income countries (many would say that this would be some kind of restoration of social justice).

But in this case, the growth of the urban population will bring with it a more serious burden on the environment.

Will Steffen, Professor Emeritus, Fenner School environment and society at State University Australia, says it fits general trend that emerged in the last century.

According to him, the problem is not population growth, but the growth - even more rapid - of world consumption (which, of course, is unevenly distributed around the world).

If so, then humanity may find itself in an even more predicament.

People living in high-income countries must do their part to keep the Earth sustainable with a growing population.

Only if richer communities are willing to reduce their consumption levels and allow their governments to support unpopular measures can the world as a whole cut Negative influence human impact on the global climate and more effectively address issues such as economical use resources and recycling.

In a 2015 study, the Journal of Industrial Ecology tried to look at environmental problems from the point of view of the household, where the focus is on consumption.

If we adopt smarter consumer habits, the state of the environment can improve dramatically

The study showed that private consumers account for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, and the use of land, water and other raw materials their share is up to 80%.

Moreover, the researchers concluded that the pressure on the environment differs from region to region and that, per household, it is highest in economically prosperous countries.

Diana Ivanova from the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, who developed the concept for this study, explains that it changed the traditional view of who should be responsible for industrial emissions associated with the production of consumer goods.

"We are all trying to shift the blame to someone else, to the state or to enterprises," she notes.

In the West, for example, consumers often express the opinion that China and other countries that produce consumer goods in industrial quantities should also be responsible for emissions associated with production.

But Diana and her colleagues believe that an equal share of the responsibility lies with the consumers themselves: "If we begin to follow smarter consumer habits, the state of the environment can significantly improve." According to this logic, radical changes in basic values ​​are needed. developed countries: the emphasis should move from material wealth to a model where the most important thing is personal and social well-being.

But even if favorable changes take place in mass consumer behavior, it is unlikely that our planet will be able to sustain a population of 11 billion people for a long time.

Therefore, Will Steffen proposes to stabilize the population somewhere in the region of nine billion, and then begin to gradually reduce it by reducing the birth rate.

Stabilization of the Earth's population implies both a reduction in resource consumption and the expansion of women's rights.

In fact, there are signs that some stabilization is already underway, even if the population continues to grow statistically.

Population growth has been slowing since the 1960s, and surveys of fertility rates by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs indicate that, worldwide, the birth rate per woman has fallen from 4.7 children in 1970-75 to 2.6 in 2005-10.

However, it will take centuries for any really significant changes to take place in this area, according to Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The trend towards an increase in the birth rate is so deeply rooted that even a major catastrophe will not be able to radically change the situation, the scientist believes.

According to a 2014 study, Corey concluded that even if the world's population were reduced by two billion tomorrow due to increased mortality, or if governments of all countries, like China, passed unpopular laws that limit the number of children, then by 2100 the number of people on our planet would at best remain at its current level.

Therefore, it is necessary to search alternative ways reduction in the birth rate, and seek urgently.

If some or all of us increase our consumption, then the upper limit for sustainable (sustainable) population of the Earth will decrease

One relatively simple way is to raise the status of women, especially in terms of their educational and employment opportunities, says Will Steffen.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated that 350 million women in the poorest countries were not going to have their last child, but they had no way to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

If the basic needs of these women in terms of personal development, the problem of overpopulation of the Earth due to excessively high birth rates would not be so acute.

Following this logic, the stabilization of the population of our planet implies both a reduction in resource consumption and the expansion of women's rights.

But if a population of 11 billion is unsustainable, how many people - in theory - can our Earth support?

Corey Bradshaw thinks it's nearly impossible to give a specific number as it will depend on technology in areas such as Agriculture, energy and transport, as well as how many people we are ready to sentence to a life full of hardships and restrictions, including in food.

It is a fairly common belief that humanity has already exceeded the permissible limit, given the wasteful lifestyle that many of its representatives lead and which they are unlikely to want to give up.

As arguments in favor of this point of view, such environmental trends as global warming, reduction of biospecies diversity and pollution of the world's oceans.

Social statistics also come to the rescue, according to which currently one billion people in the world are actually starving, and another billion suffer from chronic malnutrition.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of population was associated equally with female fertility and soil fertility.

The most common option is 8 billion, i.e. a little more than the current level. The lowest figure is 2 billion. The highest is 1024 billion.

And since assumptions about the allowable demographic maximum depend on a number of assumptions, it is difficult to say which of the above estimates is closest to reality.

But ultimately the determining factor will be how society organizes its consumption.

If some of us - or all of us - increase our consumption, then the upper limit on the acceptable (in terms of sustainable development) population of the Earth will decrease.

If we find opportunities to consume less, ideally without giving up the benefits of civilization, then our planet will be able to support more people.

The acceptable population limit will also depend on the development of technology, an area in which it is difficult to predict anything.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of population was associated equally with both female fertility and the fertility of agricultural land.

In his 1928 book The Shadow of the World to Come, George Knibbs suggested that if the world's population reaches 7.8 billion, humanity will need to be much more efficient in cultivating and using land.

And three years later, Carl Bosch received Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of chemical fertilizers, the production of which was, presumably, the most important factor in the population boom that occurred in the twentieth century.

In the distant future, scientific and technological progress can significantly raise the upper limit of the permissible population of the Earth.

Ever since people first traveled into space, mankind is no longer content with observing stars from the Earth, but is seriously discussing the possibility of resettlement to other planets.

Many prominent scientists and thinkers, including the physicist Stephen Hawking, even declare that the colonization of other worlds will have crucial for the survival of man and other biological species represented on Earth.

Although the NASA exoplanet program launched in 2009 discovered a large number of planets similar to the Earth, they are all too remote from us and little studied. (As part of this program, the American space agency created the Kepler satellite equipped with an ultrasensitive photometer to search for Earth-like planets beyond solar system so-called exoplanets.)

So moving people to another planet is not yet an option. For the foreseeable future, the Earth will be our only home, and we must learn to live in it in an environmentally friendly way.

This implies, of course, an overall reduction in consumption, in particular a transition to a lifestyle with low CO2 emissions, as well as an improvement in the status of women around the world.

Only by taking some steps in this direction, we will be able to roughly calculate how much the planet Earth can support the people.

• Read on English language can be on the website.

Tired of all these mantras about the fantastic capacity of Kyiv streets and squares, so let's use the formula from school course mathematics for grade 3:
The area of ​​a rectangle is equal to the length times the width.

So, let's look at the length of Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Let's use the built-in tool for measuring distances of the program Google Earth

We get: a = 0.33 km = 330 m

Measuring the width:

Width b = 0.11 km = 110 m

We substitute the measured width and length into the formula:

S \u003d 330 x 110 \u003d 36300 sq. m.

In words for the especially gifted thirty-six thousand three hundred square meters.
A maximum of 2 (two) people can be accommodated per square meter. Skeptics can outline a square meter at home and try it on their own experience.
Now we count maximum amount people that Maidan Nezalezhnosti can accommodate:

36,300 sq. m x 2 people = 72,600 people.

72,600 people if they occupy including flower beds, roads, roofs of buildings, buildings and trees .

***
After reading the comments, I see that there is no doubt about the calculation of the area of ​​Maidan Nezalezhnosti, but the number of people that can fit in one square meter is hotly debated. Well, as they say, everything has already been experimented with before us:

A small area is tiled with 70×70 cm tiles, that is, each tile is almost 0.5 square meter, 2 tiles are one square meter…

The experiment begins!

In total, we conducted two independent experiments with different “sample” of people. I thank them for their help and patience.

Experimenter No. 1

7 people / 9 sq.m. = 0.8 people/sq.m.

12 people / 9 sq.m. = 1.3 people/sq.m.

7 people / 3 sq.m. = 2.3 people/sq.m.

11 people / 4.5 sq.m. = 2.4 people/sq.m.

12 people / 4 sq.m. = 3.0 people/sq.m.

11 people / 3 sq.m. = 3.7 people/sq.m.

12 people / 3 sq.m. = 4.0 people/sq.m.

14 people / 3 sq.m. = 4.7 people/sq.m.

11 people / 2 sq.m. = 5.5 people/sq.m.

Conclusion (summary, summary, etc.)

The maximum recorded density was 5.5 people and, accordingly, 4.7 people per 1 square meter. Let's take the average of the two examples. As a certified geodetic engineer, I confirm:

On the public events(rallies or concerts and other public events) the maximum density of people in the crowd can reach 5 people per 1 square meter.

Total: 36,300 x 5 = 181,500 people - the maximum possible number of people who can be accommodated on Independence Square .

As you understand, such a dense placement is possible only if the area is rationally compacted using the placement manager, leading to the area in batches.
More - only by taking people on their hands and on their shoulders.

The actual density per meter that was achieved in notable events on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, in my opinion, is more suitable for the picture:

"7 people for 3 square meters= 2.3 people"

By popular demand, we calculate the capacity of st. Khreshchatyk with the maximum possible density of people per meter 5 (five) people

We measure the length of the occupied part of Khreshchatyk:

Measuring the width:

We substitute the results into the area formula:

S = (590 m<вся длина Крещатика> - 110 m<ширина площади Независимости> ) x 72 m<ширина> = 34 560 sq.m

People on Khreshchatyk: 34,560 x 5 = 172,800 human.

We count the total number of people on Maidan and Khreshchatyk:

* * *
That's all, we are finishing the farce with a million of faithful moydanschGov. Move the capital to Kharkov - there, maybe a million will fit. But who will let him in?

* * *
Bonus.
About mathematics, geometry and the greatness of the spirit.

In the comments, an idea was voiced, they say, the greatness of the Ukrainian spirit compensates for the shortcomings of mathematics.
The greatness of the spirit gives rise to optical illusions.

I give an example of a picture where the number of people in the frame looks clearly more than the declared official statistics:

March of German prisoners in Moscow - passage along the Garden Ring

The march of German prisoners took place on July 17, 1944, demonstrating Soviet people, as well as to the allies who did not believe in the successes of the Red Army, the results of the defeat German troops in Belarus. Walked along the Garden Ring and other streets of Moscow about 57,000 German soldiers and officers(including 19 generals), mostly captured in Belarus by the troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts. Sprinklers followed the columns, symbolically washing away the dirt from the asphalt.