How Big Is Minecraft? Is It Really Bigger Than Earth

Minecraft is one of the most popular games tied to the idea of exploration of the unknown. The world which the game generates has a few different biomes and it provides a true-to-life sense of exploration when it comes to those ideas. However, one question almost everyone who played Minecraft probably asked themselves is how big is Minecraft world really?

Technically the game could generate an infinite world, but since an average person doesn’t own technology that could run or even store a file of such a world this could not be a viable answer. The actual answer is that the largest version of Minecraft is around 3.6 billion square kilometers.

This is a question the players have asked themselves since the game came out. There are many different layers to this problem so if you would like to know more about this question keep reading this article and you will be a Minecraft pro in no time. The article will offer an answer to this question as well as touch upon similar questions and questions tied to the answer you are looking for.

How big is Minecraft world?

To successfully answer this question we first need to address what is an actual area of Minecraft. Usually, the game limits the size of a naturally generated area of the Minecraft world.

The original game will generate a world of sixty million blocks squared and two hundred and fifty-six blocks for height. There are also two hundred and forty blocks that generate beyond the border in every direction.

With the measurements of a single block being one meter by one meter by one meter, the surface of the Minecraft area at its largest is around 3.6 billion square kilometers.

The largest version of Minecraft is featured on the PC version. This version can do exactly what he talked about just now, create an infinite area once the border is removed.

The reason for the border’s existence in the game is simply the size of the file for the Minecraft world of this size. With each block carrying 4 bits of information, a fully generated world surrounded by the border contains roughly 410 000 terabytes of information.

However, this is where we run into a small problem. This date is only for the surface world of the Minecraft world. Besides the Overworld, the player can also travel to The End and The Nether.

The Nether is an underworld dimension, filled with lava and creatures native to it. It shares the same coordinate system the Overworld has, but the Nether has a scaling factor, 1 block to eight blocks to be specific. 

This means that one block of distance in the Nether is eight blocks in the Overworld. Taking this into consideration and modifying our calculations we can conclude that the Nether is around 53 million square kilometers.

To put this into perspective this area is still a little less than six times the area of the United States.

If you maxed out on the Overworld and the Nether alone you would need a facility similar to the ones used by companies like Google and Microsoft just to be able to store the file.

Just to make it a little bit clearer for you, in comparison, around three hundred hours of video content is being uploaded to YouTube each second which accounts for around 1.1 terabytes of data per second.

The entirety of the maxed-out Minecraft world file would take up the same storage space as 296 days of YouTube videos. 

The last thing we need to consider is The End dimension. It is the dimension in which the final challenge of the game takes place.

The dimension consists of one large island made out of the end stone and the surrounding smaller islands. Although the biome makes it seem like the dimension is infinite, the world shares the same border as the Overworld, making it the same in size.

Can Minecraft be infinite? 

But can the area be bigger than this? The answer is an absolute yes since you can delete the world border. Technically if you modify the game’s code a little and run it on a device that can support it, you could generate an infinite area. 

Let’s assume, just for the fun of it, that Minecraft is not limited by technology and devices it was being played on, would it actually be fun to play Minecraft in an unlimited World?

Although the idea seems interesting at first it would probably be quite detrimental to the gaming experience. This comes from the fact that infinity is not actually what most people perceive it to be.

It is quite hard to imagine something infinite since we don’t come across it in real life. Most people imagine it as something really big, but infinite is not something regarding the size but rather a state of being.

It is a well-documented occurrence that once people are faced with infinite options they often don’t know what to do. In a game where there is an unlimited amount of things you can do as it is being faced with an actually infinite amount of options may leave players in a state where they find it hard to choose what to do.

What is the Minecraft World Border?

The World Border is a customizable border around the playable Minecraft area. It is different from the definite World border set by the technological boundaries of the game.

The border can be modified to be smaller than it is set to be by default. The border can be set even on a partial block and still be effective. It shows up as light blue and red in the Nether.

The border is completely customizable. The most obvious one is setting the size. Besides the border itself, the player can add many different features. 

The player can input the coordinates of the center of the border while putting in the size of it. At any given time the player can add or subtract a certain area from the border, regardless of whether the border was already set. 

Besides the area the border will cover, the players can also set a timer that will gradually expand or reduce the area inside the border in equal intervals. This feature is extremely useful while setting up different challenges inside a Minecraft server.

In addition to this, to make it a bit more interesting the players can determine which amount of block beyond the border can the person playing pass before starting to receive damage. If you chose to implement this feature it may also be useful to enable the warning feature which tints your screen once you pass a set number of blocks beyond the border.

Most entities can’t move through the border. If you leave the border while in survival mode you will receive constant damage, however, this can be avoided by playing in spectator or creative mode.

There are means the players can use to go beyond the border such as letting the world border pass them as it is shrinking, throwing an ender pearl through the world border or teleporting beyond the border. However, once the players are outside the border they cannot place nor destroy the blocks.

While you as a player can’t place any liquids beyond the border you can place them just outside and let them flow through to the other side of it, since all of the liquids in the game have the capability to flow beyond the border until they reach their flow limit.

One anomaly tied to the border occurs once you try to mix water and lava. If you mix water and lava in the Overworld you get stone, cobblestone, or obsidian, but since these blocks can’t generate beyond the border, the two liquids will abruptly end their flow.

How big is Minecraft compared to Earth?

The surface area of the Earth is five hundred and ten million and hundred thousand square kilometers. If we take the number we calculated for the Overworld and the Nether, 3.6 billion square kilometers we can see that the entire Minecraft world can contain the planet Earth around seven times.

This means that all the people living on the Earth right now could be contained in one of the smaller versions of the naturally generated Minecraft worlds.