
Undercover Cells: New Estimate of the Microbes Beneath the Continents - bryanrasmussen
https://deepcarbon.net/index.php/undercover-cells-new-estimate-microbes-beneath-continents
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gilleain
So the estimate is:

>200 to 600 octillion microbes (2 to 6x10^29 cells) live in the continental
subsurface.

Ok, can you give me that in blue whales?

>These cells represent about four to 13 petagrams of carbon, (each petagram is
about one billion tons, or more than five million blue whales), which is
approximately four to 10 times less than earlier estimates.

Great.

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vanderZwan
Serious question: is "blue whales" a common informal unit for biomass?

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bryanrasmussen
I think 'large animal that people are familiar with' is for science
popularizing articles. Let's say it was less than a 10,000 blue whales, they
might have wanted to calculate it in African Elephants.

