credit: Jenrawr

What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?

Dave

It would be a huge pile, but human viruses would make up only a tiny fraction of it.

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has killed tens of millions of people worldwide, and over 30 million people are currently living with HIV. The number of copies of the virus carried in someone's blood can vary dramatically,[1]Data on viral load—the number of copies of the virus per mL of blood—can be found in this paper. but across all the people in the world, there probably exists about a spoonful worth of HIV.

The typical healthy human body contains about \(3 \times 10^{12}\) viruses. This is actually not as many as you might expect; by volume, humans are apparently a less friendly environment for viruses than, say, soil.[2]An area of wetlands in Delaware contains something like four billion viruses per mL of soil, in case you were looking for a fun vacation destination.

If you gathered together all the viruses in all the humans in the world, they would fill about ten oil drums:

These 10 barrels only represent a tiny portion of the global virus community. Most of the world's viruses aren't found in humans. They're found in the sea.

Seawater is full of microorganisms, and we've recently learned that those microorganisms are preyed on by viruses in a big way. Every day, about one in five living cells in the ocean is killed by a virus.[3]Marine viruses—major players in the global ecosystem These viruses are found from the surface of the ocean down to the depths.[4]Oddly, as you go further offshore and further down, the concentration of viruses doesn't decrease as much as the concentration of bacteria, so the virus-to-bacteria ratio is higher in the deep oceans than near the shore. Because the sea is so big,[5]Citation: Go and look at the sea. It's big. it contains a staggering number of viruses.

If you piled up all these viruses—more than 10³⁰ of them—in one place, they would be the size of a small mountain.

It's hard to say exactly what the virus mountain would look like, but it would probably resemble something in between pus and meat slurry.[6]Blame Dave—he's the one who asked. Regardless of its exact appearance, it would almost certainly be disgusting.

The pile wouldn't stay mountain-shaped for long, any more than a mountain of any organic secretion would.[7]If you don't believe me, try building a mountain of earwax or snot. You'll find you can't make it higher than a few inches before your friends and family show up and sit you down for a talk. To avoid a gigantic flood, it might be better to collect them into some kind of container.

MetLife Stadium, host of Super Bowl XLVIII, has a volume of about 1.5 million cubic meters. Earth's viruses could fill the stadium about 150 times over.

So if you watch the Super Bowl, take a moment to picture all the players floating, suspended, in a sea of yellowish-white secretions.

Enjoy the game!

Let us know if you have any interesting and attainable new year’s resolutions here.

Retraction: Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men

Nature 504, 7480 (2013). doi:10.1038/nature12728

Authors: William M. Brown, Lee Cronk, Keith Grochow, Amy Jacobson, C. Karen Liu, Zoran Popović & Robert Trivers

Nature438, 1148–1150 (2005); doi:10.1038/nature04344We retract this Letter, which reported strong positive associations between symmetry and dancing ability in a group of young Jamaican men. K.G. could not be contacted.

Many people have been in touch seeking a hi-res version of this photo taken on Sunday in the Phoenix Park, Dublin by Eoin Kernan we posted yesterday.

Eoin writes:

I’ve gotten back to everyone now. It was shot on my iPhone, so it’s still not really high res but I’ve attached a high-res version. If anyone wants this just send a request to Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie.

Previously: Still Rutting

A sobering visual.

Context: 89,000 Gone In A Year

(Thanks Oireachtas Retort)

A map of Europe overlaid (and roughly size-matched) with the 50 US States by Kegler Press.

We’re West Virginia.

Yay!

22words/thisisnthappiness

‘Science communicator’ and PhD student Jamie Gallagher maps where the scientists who discovered the various elements of the Periodic Table were living when they discovered them. Talking to Smart News, Gallagher sez;

One of my favourites has to be polonium, though, the first element to be discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. They were working in a modified shed with substances so dangerously radioactive their notes are still too active to be handled safely. Working together they isolated this element and later named it Polonium after Marie’s home country. (A country, I may add, that turned her away from her pursuit of education as she was a politically interested female). It was her hope that by naming the element after Poland she could generate interested in the independence (from Germany) campaign for the country. Yet [in my periodic table] the victory comes in under the French flag where the work was carried out. It remains to this day the only element to be named after a political cause, and a wonderful tribute to a phenomenal woman.

Full sized version here.

io9

A Lar Gibbon at Monkeyland in Piettenberg Bay, South Africa shimmies across a suspension bridge like a boss typical arboreal primate.

laughingsquid

Don’t worry about licensing someone else’s character/content, or even tracing that “meme” you found – just save that shit straight off Reddit and slap it on a $11 coffee mug.

Oh, and don’t try to make it look like it’s bending around the mug or anything, just slap it on there.

The second in the almost ediblle visual recipe series from Forkful with eye candy again supplied by Mark Duggan and Aoife McElwain (top).

They loNOMNOMNOM

Ingredients and whatnot here

Forkful

Previously: Parsnip Fritters

Last Sunday, a railroad bridge across the Colorado River between San Saba and Lometa in Texas caught fire. All the firecrews could do was watch (and film it). Firefighter captain Jack Blossman said:

Within 25 seconds, it was just gone, and then it just turned into a giant fireball, because of all of the creosote in the cross-ties.

Wait for it…

22words/bagofnothing

Wildlife cameraman Brad Josephs sez:

When using a GoPro to capture unusually close footage of grizzly bears for the Great Bear Stakeout for BBC, I had a young bear actually chew on the camera. Amazingly there was no damage to the camera! Some of this clip appears in the film Great Bear Stakeoout on BBC and Discovery Channel.

Warning: Grizzly bears do not floss.

Making of The Great Bear Stakeout- Behind the scenes (Alaska Bears and Wolves)

awesomer/dailytimes

bizarrocomics