Your blood vessels could circle Earth twice
Seriously, all that tubing inside you could wrap around our planet
they'd wrap around the entire planet twice. Two full times
Take a position: what's actually doing the work here?
One of these is closer than the rest. Commit before you find out.
- Seriously, all that tubing inside you could wrap around our planet
- Capillaries are everywhere.
- Even more incredible is the speed of the transit.
An adult human body contains approximately 60,000 to 100,000 miles of blood vessels. If you tied them end-to-end, they could circle the entire globe more than two times.
The vast majority of this length doesn't come from thick arteries or veins, but from capillaries. These are the microscopic vessels so thin that red blood cells have to march through them in single file, often squeezing and deforming just to fit.
Capillaries are everywhere. They are so densely packed into your tissues that almost no cell in your body is further than the width of a human hair away from a blood supply. Your lungs alone contain about 1,500 miles of these tiny tubes to facilitate gas exchange.
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