I was sitting at my desk today, staring at my coffee, and I had one of those “existential crisis” moments—the kind that makes you look at your own hands and wonder if they’re even real. I started digging into some old physics notes, and I came across a fact that honestly feels like a glitch in the Matrix.
What if I told you that every single human being on this planet—all 8 billion of us—could fit inside the volume of a single sugar cube?
I know, it sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie or a late-night Reddit rabbit hole, but the math actually checks out. It all comes down to the weird, hollow nature of the atoms that make us up.
We Are Literally Made of Nothing
To understand how 8 billion people can fit in your hand, we have to look at the atom. When we were kids, we were taught that atoms look like little solar systems with a solid center and little balls orbiting around it. But that model is a bit misleading because it doesn’t capture the scale of the emptiness.
Here is the breakdown of why we are basically “ghosts” made of organized energy:
- The 99.9999999% Rule: An atom is roughly 99.9999999% empty space.
- The Stadium Metaphor: If you expanded an atom to the size of a massive football stadium, the nucleus (the part where almost all the mass lives) would be the size of a small marble sitting on the 50-yard line.
- The Electron “Flies”: The electrons would be like tiny gnats buzzing around the very highest seats in the stands.
- The Void: Everything between that marble and those gnats? Absolutely nothing. Just empty space.
When I first wrapped my head around this, I realized that everything I touch—my keyboard, my phone, even my own skin—is just a collection of tiny points of matter separated by vast distances of void.
The Weight of the World (Literally)
So, if we took a “vacuum cleaner” for the universe and sucked all that empty space out of the atoms of every person on Earth, we would be left with just the nuclei and electrons.
The result? The entire human race would shrink down to the size of a sugar cube.
But don’t let the size fool you. Since we haven’t lost any of our actual mass, that tiny cube would be unimaginably dense. I did some checking, and that little cube would weigh approximately 5 billion tons.
To put that into perspective, that’s about the same weight as 900 Great Pyramids of Giza. If you tried to pick up that sugar cube, you’d be trying to lift a mountain.
Why Don’t We Fall Through the Floor?
If we are mostly empty space, why don’t our feet just pass through the ground? Why doesn’t my hand go right through my coffee mug?
It’s not because we are “solid.” It’s because of electromagnetic repulsion. The electrons in your atoms and the electrons in the chair you’re sitting on are both negatively charged. Since like charges repel, they push away from each other.
Ugu’s Note: You aren’t actually “touching” anything. You are just feeling the invisible force fields of trillions of atoms pushing back against you. We are floating on a cushion of electric fields!
Why This Matters for the Metaverse and Beyond
You might wonder why I’m talking about quantum physics on a tech and metaverse site. To me, this is the ultimate proof that reality is programmable.
If the physical world is 99% empty space and governed by electrical signals, the line between “physical reality” and “digital reality” starts to get very blurry. In the Metaverse, we build worlds out of code; in the physical world, nature builds worlds out of empty space and energy.
Understanding the “emptiness” of our world makes the idea of living in a digital simulation feel a lot less like a conspiracy theory and a lot more like a logical conclusion.
The Stats: A Quick Look at the Density
| Object | State | Volume | Weight |
| 8 Billion Humans | Normal | ~400 million cubic meters | ~500 million tons |
| 8 Billion Humans | “Atomic Dense” | 1 Sugar Cube | 5 Billion Tons |
It’s humbling, isn’t it? Everything we’ve ever built, every war fought, every masterpiece painted—it’s all just a tiny amount of matter dancing in a massive void.
Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the scale of the world, I remind myself of this sugar cube. It changes your perspective on what is “solid” and what is “important.”
I’m curious—if we are mostly empty space held together by energy, do you think our consciousness is tied to the matter or the space between it?
