what
a bright world it would be.'
Let's just see:
One candle-power is the illumination a single birthday-cake candle
provides over an area of one square foot (hence, foot-candles).
Earth is about 510 million square miles.
There are not quite 28 million square feet per square mile.
This makes some 14,280 plus 12 zeroes or x 1012, which is the next
number level up from trillion, name unknown to this calculator,
and the number of foot-candles needed slightly to repel the darkness.
Now the human population of earth will soon reach 6.4 billion.
Divide 6.4 billion into 14,280 x 1012 to find out how many candles
each human being would have to light to repel slightly the darkness:
looks like about 2.222 trillion (2, 222 x 106), which at roughly
three candles per match means roughly 750 million matches
per human candle-lighter to slightly repel the darkness.
Yet this lighting-per-person will need to cover exactly the same number
of square feet as candles, since this is the meaning of a foot-candle:
light of one small flame over one square foot, darkness repelled slightly.
Thus each member of the species would have to light little candles
over an area of 2.222 trillion square feet, or 80,000 square miles
mas o menos, which seems like too many for even those most devoted
of homo sapiens who live only to light and light since a plot of land
comprising 80,000 square miles is as big as say two states of Illinois.
Not even figuring in other difficulties than time and space,
like the duration of the slight repulsion of darkness (one little candle
guttering before its neighbor three feet away is fairly lit rendering
a zero-sum of foot-candles and darkness repulsion)
or the logistics
of wading into the muddy Mississippi with a flotilla of candles
and lily-pads on which to light them, not to mention the disappointment
of sailing the ocean blue only to find your matches wet, your candles
there on the gunwales melting in the tropical sun.
No, it can't be done, however good the will. But suppose it could:
Let's calculate the effect on air quality of 2.222 x 106 birthday-cake candles
burning all at once and the slightness of darkness repelled.
'Mom, would you help me with this, please?'