Viruses

[Cheetah]

Viruses: ancient, tiny, amazing

In a 2018 study, Suttle found more than 800 million viruses settle on each square metre of Earth every single day.

In a tablespoon of seawater there are typically more viruses than there are people in Europe.

"Most of us will swallow more than a billion viruses every time we go swimming," said Suttle. "We are inundated by viruses."

A 2011 paper published in Nature Microbiology estimated that there are 1×10 to the power 31 (more than one quintillion, or 1 followed by 31 zeros) viruses on Earth.

Lay them all end to end and they'd stretch 100 million light years, or 1,000 times the breadth of the Milky Way.

Resistance is futile!

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Use of the word quintillion may confuse some readers. In US parlance the number should be a nonillion. 15 orders of magnitude larger than a US quinitillion.


The 31 digits part is correct.

 

[Venom]

They're literally falling from the skies.

 

[rjh01]

Lucky for us most of them are harmless to humans.

 

[lomiller]

Lucky for us most of them are harmless to humans.

Just the opposite. Most of them target bacteria, and without them keeping bacteria numbers in check animals like us may not be possible.