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From: lambert@mcvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: No Limits to Growth
Message-ID: <7307@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 16:33:24 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.7307
Posted: Wed Mar 25 16:33:24 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Mar-87 06:36:42 EST
References: <120300015@inmet> <120300029@inmet> <5818@ism780c.UUCP>
Reply-To: lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 26

In article <5818@ism780c.UUCP> tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) writes:
> Note: I have redirected followups to sci.misc, since this has little
> to do directly with misc.kids anymore.

Aren't there any sci.kids?

> A fun thing to do is to pick some population limit, and see how long 
> it would take to reach it.  Let's assume a 1% annual growth rate.
> [...]
> Let's get really silly now.  How long until we have so many people
> that the amount of space occupied by people is expanding at the
> speed of light?  About 11,000 years.  Does anyone want to argue
> that this is not an upper bound on human population?

Yes, since you could slow down reproduction (which would happen near the
speed of light anyway) and still expand.

Another matter is that with unchecked reproduction at a constant 1% rate
the pop count would exceed the estimated number of elementary particles in
the universe in about 18,300 years.  That seems a pretty safe upper bound
to me, but then they might discover new hierarchies of sub-elementary
gizmons in the next 183 centuries.

-- 

Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam; lambert@cwi.nl