Relating big numbers to other big no's out of context is an easy way to get a sense of them.
The biggest source of confusion:
Lets first clarify international standards. This simplifies things tremendously in the minds of many people, especially many over 50 year olds.
The old UK meaning of a billion was actually one million million, or one followed by twelve noughts (1,000,000,000,000).
The US meaning of a billion is in fact a thousand million, or one followed by nine noughts (1,000,000,000).
Increasingly most countries are starting to use the more recent USA meaning** of a billion for these big numbers, and the number name "trillion" is being utilised for the old UK meaning of one followed by twelve noughts.
The US meaning of a billion is in fact a thousand million, or one followed by nine noughts (1,000,000,000).
Many people hesitate at the possibility the old figure may still apply, or need a bit of clarification about whether the old English billion was 100, 1'000 or 1'000'000 million.
Increasingly most countries are starting to use the more recent USA meaning** of a billion for these big numbers, and the number name "trillion" is being utilised for the old UK meaning of one followed by twelve noughts.
The UK government has even been using the American meaning of billion since 1974 for the stats it gives out.
One million seconds counted in real time would take:
One billion seconds in real time is a bit over:
**This is a notable point of departure culturally speaking because the US typically is the worlds most conservative nation regarding all things measurement, they are very comfortable with the imperial units in most measurements while most of the world has has gone metric for standardisation purposes.
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| Image courtesy Astronomy Trek |
Seconds, Minutes, Hours:
Getting a sense of the difference between thousands, millions and billions
11 days, 13 hours 46 minutes and 40 seconds.
One billion seconds in real time is a bit over:
31 and one half years.
Tool: Very Long Number Time Calculator
Lets have a look at quite a common mental device, a question used to gain some perspective on this issue:
Tool: Very Long Number Time Calculator
Stars VS Sand
Lets have a look at quite a common mental device, a question used to gain some perspective on this issue:
Q) Which Is Greater, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky?
Turns out the answer is stars, and to be fair that's just based on what we can so far observe. Likewise for fairness, we are comparing only against the top layer of sand.
What about comparing atoms in one of those grains of sand to the number of stars in the observable universe?
As for atoms in a grain of sand, Google says that there are supposedly about 2 x 10^19 atoms in a grain of sand. This means there are less atoms in a grain of sand than stars in the sky, there are supposedly 10^21 stars in the observable universe.
Off the top of your head, which would you say is a greater distance:
A) 0.000000001 of a light year. Or B) 100 Kilometers.
The answer is actually (A) which equates to just under 10 000 kilometers.
You may note with some interest how closely the above tracks the abundance of atomic elements in the galaxy.
Turns out the answer is stars, and to be fair that's just based on what we can so far observe. Likewise for fairness, we are comparing only against the top layer of sand.
What about comparing atoms in one of those grains of sand to the number of stars in the observable universe?
As for atoms in a grain of sand, Google says that there are supposedly about 2 x 10^19 atoms in a grain of sand. This means there are less atoms in a grain of sand than stars in the sky, there are supposedly 10^21 stars in the observable universe.
Distance.
Off the top of your head, which would you say is a greater distance:
A) 0.000000001 of a light year. Or B) 100 Kilometers.
The answer is actually (A) which equates to just under 10 000 kilometers.
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| An astronomical unit (AU) is 1xdistance from earth to the sun. |
Composition of our bodies:
According to Wikipedia:
Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All 11 are necessary for life. The remaining elements are trace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought on the basis of good evidence to be necessary for life.[1] All of the mass of the trace elements put together (less than 10 grams for a human body) do not add up to the body mass of magnesium, the least common of the 11 non-trace elements.
You may note with some interest how closely the above tracks the abundance of atomic elements in the galaxy.
Hydrogen
I think it is quite a reasonable assessment to say that the atomic elements, matter at its most fundamental for practical purposes of chemistry, are in abundant supply for life. Some say this correlation may even explain why these form the above ratio in organic chemistry.
It gets murkier the further we go!
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| Find out more about why we are clueless with cosmic distance HERE |
The Universe.
That being said, the electric nature of atoms needs a much more profound elaboration since it yields an even more fundamental aspect of this same matter.
Plasma is known as the fourth state of matter (Solids, liquids and gasses being the first three) although in truth it should be known as the first since plasma actually makes up over 99% of matter in the universe. The influence of gravity as a very weak force compared to the electromagnetic force is well established (Electromagnetism - the force we know best - is 10 to the 36th power stronger than Gravity. That's actually a staggering 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger!) and this fact has been well integrated into the plasma physics used by Plasma Cosmology.
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