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The human population has more than doubled in the past 50 years, so has the mass of our planet and everything on it increased?
John Rieuwerts, Yelverton, Devon, UK
The extra mass of a doubled human population has come from the soil, oceans and atmosphere, so the overall mass of the Earth system hasn’t changed.
I find it humbling to know that the countless atoms that make up “me” were previously scattered across the world and have even been part of people who lived in past centuries.
As such, each of us is a temporary collection of elements borrowed from…
