“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air.”
When we talk about climate change or pollution, a lot of big numbers are thrown around.
Like how 33 billion tons of CO2 and 660 million tons of Methane are released into the air
each year. is that a lot?
Or not?
To answer that question, we need to ask a question: Just how big is the atmosphere?
Imagine for a second that the Earth is a soccer ball.
How big do you think this ball would be with the Earth’s atmosphere included?
An inch?
A centimeter?
No.
Just over 1 millimeter bigger.
That’s right, all the air up there, all the molecules that keep everything alive down
here, would occupy the same amount of space as a few sheets of newspaper wrapped around
this ball.
If we gathered up all the air in the atmosphere and put it next to Earth, it would look like
like this:
At first glance, it seems pretty clear that there isn’t that much air up there.
So was JFK right?
Do we actually breathe the same air that he, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Darwin, or Genghis
Khan did?
Smells like Einstein.
I imagine the very moment that Einstein figured out his famous equation, he let out a sigh
of relief.
That breath might have been one of the smartest breaths to have ever been breathed, and probability
says that every so often, when I breathe, I breathe a little of that breath.
To see just how much of that breath we all share, we’ll use some round numbers to calculate
about how many molecules of air there in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is about 80% N2 and 20% O2.
Scientists have worked out that Earth’s atmosphere weighs about 5 x 10^21 g.
One mole, or 6 x10^23 molecules of air weighs about 28.8 grams, which tells us that the
entire atmosphere has about 1x10^44 molecules in it.
Take a deep breath.
Now breathe out.
That was probably about a liter of air, which at room temperature is about 2.4x10^22 molecules.
To get an idea of how many molecules that is, if each of those molecules were a grain
of sand, then you’d be dead, because your lungs were full of sand.
And the entire United States would be covered in sand eight stories thick, just from the
number of molecules in ONE breath.
It also means that there’s enough molecules in one breath that, as long as the wind keeps
blowing the atmosphere around, we’ve all probably breathed in at least one of Einstein’s
E=mc^2 molecules by now, at least according to probability.
Given enough time, we will all share some small part of a breath.
So JFK was right . . . we’ve all shared the same air.
By applying a little science, we become acutely aware that our atmosphere, though seemingly
enormous, is perilously thin, and belongs to us all.
And just as we’ve shared the air with great minds of the past, we’ll share it with those
who come after us as well.
Let’s take a little time to consider what we’re filling it with.