Every Second on Earth
Babies born, emails sent, lightning strikes, heartbeats, burgers, carbon, extinctions — all counting up together, live. Everything below has happened on the planet since you opened this page.
Live ticker of global events per second
Real per-second averages from public estimates, applied steadily. Not a live feed of individual events.
About This Ticker
We talk about the world in years and headlines, never in seconds. Every Second on Earth shrinks the timescale to one heartbeat and shows you what the planet does in it — all at once. The instant you arrived, eight counters began to climb: lives starting and ending, messages flying, sky splitting with lightning, beef going over the counter, carbon going up, and somewhere, very occasionally, a species going out for good.
Watch for a minute. Notice which numbers blur instantly and which barely twitch. The gap between them — ten billion heartbeats a second against one lost species every eighteen minutes — says more about scale than any chart.
Real rates
Every counter uses a published per-second estimate, listed plainly below. No invented numbers.
Starts at zero
Counters measure what happened since you opened the page — the world's output during your visit.
Honest about scale
The species counter is meant to sit still. Its rarity, next to the blur, is the whole point.
Free, no signup
Runs in your browser. Nothing to install, no account, nothing in the way.
The Rates Behind It
These are widely cited global averages. They drift over time and are estimates, not exact counts:
- Babies born — about 4.3 every second (≈ 385,000 a day), per UN and US Census figures.
- People died — about 1.9 every second (≈ 165,000 a day).
- Human heartbeats — roughly 10 billion a second: about 8.3 billion people at ~75 beats per minute.
- Emails sent — about 4.5 million a second (≈ 390 billion a day), per industry trackers.
- Lightning strikes — the ground is hit about 44 times a second worldwide.
- McDonald's burgers — an estimated 75 a second (≈ 6.5 million a day).
- Carbon dioxide — roughly 1,200 tonnes emitted every second (≈ 37 billion tonnes a year).
- Species lost — an estimated one roughly every 18 minutes (around 30,000 a year).
Why This Exists
A second feels like nothing. It's the time it takes to blink, to forget what you were about to say. But the planet doesn't waste it. In that same blink, four people are born, two die, the sky cracks open forty-odd times, and ten billion hearts squeeze once more. We can't feel numbers that big, but we can watch them accumulate, and watching is a different kind of understanding.
Every Second on Earth is a small place to sit with that. No goal, no score — just the world, ticking, while you happen to be looking.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Every Second on Earth?
Every Second on Earth is a free live ticker that counts global events in real time. The moment you open it, counters start rising together — babies born, people who have died, human heartbeats, emails sent, lightning strikes, McDonald's burgers sold, tonnes of carbon emitted, and species lost — so you can watch the whole planet add up second by second.
Are these numbers real?
They are real per-second averages drawn from public estimates, not a live feed from the world. About 4.3 babies are born and 1.9 people die each second, around 4.5 million emails are sent, lightning strikes the ground about 44 times, and McDonald's sells roughly 75 burgers. The counters apply these rates steadily, so they show realistic totals rather than exact, individually verified events.
Why do the counters start at zero?
Each counter measures what has happened since the moment you opened the page. It is more honest than inventing a midnight baseline, and more striking: every number on screen is the world's output during the exact time you have spent here.
How can there be billions of heartbeats per second?
There are around 8.3 billion people alive, and a typical heart beats roughly 75 times a minute. Add every living heart together and the planet produces on the order of 10 billion heartbeats every single second — which is why that counter blurs almost instantly.
Why does the species counter barely move?
Estimated extinctions run at roughly one species every 18 minutes, so it will likely read zero for your whole visit. That stillness is the point: beside the blur of burgers and emails, the loss of a species is rare, quiet, and permanent.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes. Every Second on Earth runs entirely in your browser with no signup or download, and the dashboard adapts to phones and tablets. It works in modern mobile browsers including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.