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+251 per minute · since 00:00 UTC
This is a live, continuously changing estimate. It isn't printed here because a figure on paper would be wrong the moment you read it — see the current value at https://earthnow.app/signal/people-ever-lived.
Estimated, not measured
EarthNow's estimate for "People Ever Lived". This signal does not yet have a written explanation — the unit and the method below are what the site can state about it honestly.
Nobody counts this as it happens. EarthNow starts from a published total, then adds today's share of a published figure for the whole day: that figure divided by the 86,400 seconds in a day, multiplied by the seconds elapsed since midnight UTC. So the value climbs smoothly and is the right order of magnitude — but the smoothness is arithmetic, not observation. Nothing happening in the world is being watched in real time.
value = published total + daily total ÷ 86,400 × seconds since 00:00 UTC
A consequence worth knowing: the part added today resets at midnight UTC, not at your midnight. And because the figure advances at a constant rate, this page cannot tell you whether today is unusual. For that you need a measurement.
PRB's estimate of everyone born since ~190,000 BCE. Grows at the current birth rate.
The figure is theirs; the running total is ours. Cite them for the number, and EarthNow for what it looks like as it accumulates.
Citation