How big is a trillion?
It’s a one followed by a dozen zeroes, but how big is it really?
A trillion days ago, the year was 2,739,724,018 BC, and the only life on Earth was single cell organisms.
A trillion hours ago, it was 114,153,224 BC, and it was the middle of the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs ruled the planet.
A trillion minutes ago, it was 1,900,579 BC and Homo Ergaster had just evolved.
A trillion seconds ago, it was 29,701 BC and Neanderthals were chasing wooly mammoths.
It will take the 26,000 trees in Central Park 769 years to produce a trillion leaves.
For just a little bit more than a trillion dollars in the 1940s, America could have fought the Second World War four times.
If you worked 40 hours a week, you would have to make $480,769,231 per hour to earn a trillion dollars in a year.
If you took a trillion steps with an average stride length of 30 inches, you would walk 473,484,848 miles, a distance equal 19,015 trips around the globe, or one trip to Jupiter when it is in opposition, and still have enough steps left over to walk to Mars three times. But bring an extra pair of sneakers, since, at an average walking speed of four miles per hour, it will take you 28,538,813 years to walk that far.
The largest dump truck in the world would have to carry more than nine full loads to move a trillion grains of sand. A regular dump truck will have to make 150 trips.
If you laid a trillion dollar bills from end to end, they would stretch 96,906,566 miles, more than enough to reach the sun.
If you stacked a trillion one dollar bills on top of each other, they would climb to a height of 67,866 miles. If you laid that stack on the ground it would wrap the Earth two and a half times.
A trillion dollars worth of pennies weighs 275,000,000 tons, the equivalent of 2,835 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
If you made the average hourly wage of $18.46, and worked 40 hours a week, you would have to work for 26,04,837 years to earn a trillion dollars.
If every Amercan service member ate 2,500 calories a day while they were deployed to Iraq, it would take until next year before they will have consumed a trillion calories.
If you put the entire human population on a scale together they would weigh about a trillion pounds.
The entire area of the state of Maine is a little bit less than a trillion square feet.
And finally, a trillion bricks is enough to build the Great Wall of China 258 times, or long enough to reach the moon and back, twice.
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