'Billions' a Small Number in the Universe

Billions

This is a gigantic number!

When I was younger,saying that there were billions of anything was like saying that there was a Ga-zillion of those things. It was simply a number so big that it encompassed anything considered uncountable. Now I realize that it is a very workable number.

Again when I was younger I thought that a mere million dollars could last  my family and I a lifetime. My thinking has changed; I've seen a million dollars spent in just a year by a friend of mine who was trying to break into the movie business. One year and he was nearly broke and nothing much to show for it but a very unnoticeable film.

So now when I think of enough money I think in the billions.(This is virtually unreachable unless you are a 'Bill Gates' or 'Steve Jobs' kind of person.) Still, if you had a suitcase stuffed with thousand dollar bills it would come to about a million dollars.To have a billion dollars you would need a thousand of those suitcases full of thousand dollar bills! A Billion is a thousand million. Today most everything gigantic that is in bunches comes in multiples of a billion.

Here are some examples:

750 billion galaxies in the known universe.   750x10 ninth power

30 billion trillion stars in those galaxies. 30x10 twenty-third power

100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.  100x10 ninth power

50 billion  planets circling those stars in the Milky Way (estimated Kepler observations).  50x10 ninth power.

14.7 billion years since the big bang.  14.7x10 ninth power

4.5 billion years ago the Earth formed.  4.5x10 ninth power

5,880 billion miles in a light year. (or 5.8 trillion miles)  5.9x10 twelfth power

24,696 billion miles to next nearest star. (or 24.7 trillion miles)  24.7x10 twelfth power

5.9 billion-billion miles across the Milky Way. ( or 100,000 light years)  5.9x10 eighteenth power

67.6 billion-billion miles to the next nearest galaxy Andromeda (or 67,600 million-billion miles)  67.6x10 eighteenth power.

10,000 billion human cells in the body. (or 10 trillion cells)  1x10 thirteenth power

100,000 billion bacteria inhabit the human body. (or 100 trillion bacteria cells)  1x10 fourteenth power

1.5 billion Internet users.

5.6 billion cell phones in use around the world.

1.6 billion cell phones sold around the world just last year.

1 billion cars on the roads around the world.

135.6 billion gallons of gas average consumed in America in a single year.

1.58 billion seconds lived by age fifty.

7 billion people populate the Earth.

If you think the above numbers are unbelievable check this out:

incomprehensible