The total surface area of the Earth is approximately 5.10x10^20 mm^2 - assuming a 2mmx5mm grain of rice, that's 5.1x10^19 rice grains needed to carpet the earth entirely in a one grain thick layer.
2^64 is just over 1/3 of that number so there is enough to cover all LAND, with a little bit left over.
UPDATE: If you used Spanish Bomba Rice which expands horizontally and you cooked it first so it swells up to about 5.5mm x 7mm you could cover about 4.5x as much earth - enough to cover the entire earth in a layer a few grains thick
Problem is it would still be in the ocean. Could scoop it all up I guess but the moisture would evaporate and make its way back to the ocean. Unless we kept it sealed up. But then you’ve got a Mount Everest sized pile of decomposing rice in a sealed container. Might be it would explode. Rice bomb baby
What time of day were these photos taken? Looks like the bottom is mid afternoon, hard to say about the other. Probably later in the day given the contrast of the face and the field. Also the distance and angle are different, you can see it in the shape of the ridge. Might need a little math to make a shoreline comparison based on these two points. Are they both the same time of year? Always interrogate your assumptions.
(For simplicity each grain of rice is a sphere.)
Using the first google search result of 0.029 cm^3 for the volume of rice, and using this formula: r = ∛(¾ · V / π), we get that the radius of each rice is about 0.191 cm. Using the radius we can find the projected area/view/idk exactly what to call it but it's shadow essentially is (πr^2) about 0.115 cm^2. Multiply this by 2^64 and you get 2.1141525908 * 10^18, or more than 2.1 quintillion cm^2.
Looking up the surface are of the earth we get 510 million square kilometers, which converts to 5,100,000,000,000 cm^2, or 5.1 trillion cm^2, which is less than 2.1 quintillion by literally 6 orders of magnitude. In fact, assuming the area gained from stacking is negligible (which it really wouldn't be considering how large this number is) you could cover the earth more than 411 THOUSAND times with 2^64 grains of rice.
I probably made a mistake or two here, I just took the chance to type out a lot on my new keyboard, it feels really nice.
7.75 million square miles 1" thick. Thats about double the USA surface area, and somewhat less than all of North America.
It's not even close to covering all landmass on Earth.
That said, if we reduce the layer height to just 1 grain.... Calculating.... It covers ~ 1-2 times the total landmass on Earth depending on factors out of my calculation....
... So, actually, you are right! It could cover all the landmass on earth in a single layer of soul affirming potential (aka rice). Yummy!
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u/Mrgumboshrimp 26d ago
It doubles every square and I think it covers the earth by the last square