Monday, February 10, 2014

i've told you a trillion times

US Debt = $17,322,966,800,000
but what is a "trillion"?... how do you conceptualize a number this large?

US Debt converted to seconds:
1 trillion seconds = ( 10^12 sec)/( 3.16 x 10^7 sec/yr) = 31,688 years
17.3229668 x 31,688 yr = 548,932 years

Homo-erectus lived 500,000 years ago. Neanderthals didn't evolve until nearly 300,000 years later.

US Debt converted to hours:
1 trillion hours = ( 10^12 hr)/( 8,766 hr/yr) = 114,077,116 years
17.3229668 x 144,077,116 yr = 1,976,154,095 years ~ 2 billion years

The only known living organisms 2 billion years ago were a form of algae. The first oxygen was produced on Earth.

US Debt converted to days:
1 trillion days = ( 10^12 days)/( 365.25 days/yr) = 2,737,850,787 years
17.3229668 x 2,737,850,787 yr = 47,427,698,289 years ~ 50 billion years

The universe is only 13 billion years old. So 50 billion is truly meaningless.

US Debt converted to light-years:
17,322,966,800 miles / 5.878625 mi/ly = 2.95 light years ~ 3 light-years

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (2.4×1019 km) from Earth.
Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf [star] about 4.24 light-years from Earth.

source:
US Debt Clock - February 10, 2014
How Big is a Trillion? - NASA

No comments:

Post a Comment