# How many aircraft carriers equal Earth's mass? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 17, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959 "2016-05-17T02:53:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cjackson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@cjackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjackson)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959/1 "2016-05-17T02:53:36Z")
6,569,200,000,000,000,000,000 tons of Earth = 65,692,000,000,000,000 CVN That is the number I got. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959/2 "2016-05-17T07:45:06Z")
… depends what sort of football field you measure the air craft carrier against. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959/3 "2016-05-17T15:32:45Z")
Build that many CVNs and there wouldn’t be an Earth left to weigh them against. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959/4 "2016-05-17T16:18:43Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] Build that many CVNs and there wouldn’t be an Earth left to weigh them against. [/QUOTE] We should get Randall Munroe on this, if he hasn’t already done a “What If?” on this. Guess we could slowly start harvesting meteorites for the metal so we don’t end up hollowing out the earth to a dangerous level. But has anyone defined what a “ton” is here? Gross tons are a measure of volume, not mass and deadweight tons are a measure of carrying capacity, not mass. The closest measure you’ll find to a ship’s weight is its displacement - the weight of the water it displaces, and even that gets confusing as there will be different values for freshwater vs seawater. Oh, long tonnes, short tons or metric tons? Another Randall question would be if the surface of the earth could hold that many ships, or if we’d need to stack them, like the pic that circulates on Facebook now and then of a ship shipping ship shipping ship shipping ships. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-aircraft-carriers-equal-earths-mass/754959/5 "2016-05-17T17:10:45Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > Another Randall question would be if the surface of the earth could hold that many ships, or if we’d need to stack them, like the pic that circulates on Facebook now and then of a ship shipping ship shipping ship shipping ships. Of course we’d have to stack them. The density of the earth is about 5.5 g/cc. The density of an aircraft carrier is less than the density of water, 1 g/cc (since it floats). So the total volume of all those aircraft carriers would be more than 5 times the volume of the earth. If I’ve calculated correctly, the aircraft carriers would be about 3400 miles deep, over the entire surface of the earth. However this assumes that they pack without gaps, which is probably approximately correct, and that none of them would be crushed by the pressure of the overlying carriers, which isn’t very reasonable. –Mark