7 billion

The United Nations has forecasted that the world's population will surpass 7 billion tomorrow. Only 12 years ago (in October 1999), the world passed the 6 billion mark. So, just how much is 7 billion? Here's a little visualization:

See that tiny dot? (No, that's not a speck of dust on your screen.) That's one pixel.
Let's say one pixel = one person.

Each one of these black blocks have 333,000 pixels (576 pixels X 578 pixels).
So, when you look at these three blocks together, you are looking at about 1 million pixels.

Now imagine looking at 7,000 sets of these blocks (21,000 blocks in total).
Or, imagine looking at an image on a monitor that was 83,666 pixels X 83,666 pixels.
The monitor would need to be about 64 feet X 64 feet.

That's 7 billion.
Yikes!