Interactive shows world's births and deaths in real time A screenshot of the interactive by Brad Lyons. WITH the overpopulation debate raging ever since David Attenborough muttered the words "humans are a plague on the Earth" and spoke of a "frightening explosion of human numbers," the world has been on the edge of their seats. Will we wipe ourselves out? How will we feed the masses? How will it end? The UN estimates there are 7.122 billion of us running around causing havoc at the current time, and with the global population expected to rise drastically by 2050 (with the UN predicting it will swell to 9.6 billion), it appears there may be a reason to be freaking out. If the stats going around haven't got you shaking to the core, maybe this interactive will drive it home. With about four births per second and a little more than one death per second, on average, the human existence is graphed in a mesmerising data stream. Software engineer Brad Lyons, who has a doctoral degree in mathematics, created the live visualisation of births and deaths along with a running tally of the current population on his blog Nowhere Near Ithaca . His initial intention was not to highlight the population issue, but to create a representation of "the potential pattern of life and death, based on summary birth and death rates for each country." The interactive has been created using data from the CIA factbook, with 230 countries included. If nothing else, sit back and enjoy a pretty cool distraction for your afternoon slump. Life and death in a single page. If you can't view the interactive below, click here.