How big is a trillion?

Old Navy Vet | 11 March 2010 | OldNavyVet

[OldNavyVet]

Now that our government is daily dealing in trillions of dollars, my question is ... How big is a trillion?

[OldNavyVet]

To understand how big a trillion is, consider one trillion days, and determine -- approximately -- what year it was one trillion days ago.

[DuncanWaring]

Three billion years ago.

Spending a million dollars a second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it would take 32 years to spend a trillion dollars.

For the federal government to spend 4 trillion dollars in one year, that’s roughly 125 million dollars a second all year.

[NYer]

What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like?

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…

And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…

Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It’s pretty surprising.

(And notice those pallets are double stacked.)

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.

via pagetutor.com

[nagdt]

I don’t know what day it was...or was daylight even available then? Someone told me if you stacked 100 dollar bills on top of one another and did it until you reached a trillion dollars it would be something like 65 miles tall. :P

[b4its2late]

I know this is a billion - 1,000,000,000.

[ZULU]

Obama is like a kid in a candy shop with our money.

[BreezyDog]

If my math is correct 1 trillion seconds is equal to 31,709.791983764 years.

[sodpoodle]

The Democrats are spending other peoples’ money faster than the speed of light.

Leaving us all in the dark!

[Don W]

I got 31688.087814028950237026896848937 years, but we’re both close enough for gov’t work, right?

[OldNavyVet]

Three billion years ago.

" You are right ... My figure, at 365 days per year, has it close to three billion years.

That's more than half the earth's age of 4.5 billion years, and doesn't consider the fact that 365 days is a current number. Scientists tell us that some past years contained 400 days.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

One of my favorite books is by Isaac Asimov. (Alright, ALL of my favorite books are by Isaac Asimov).

Anyway, it's called "Only a Trillion" and deals very neatly with the subject of this thread . A darned good read.

[NCC-1701]

Now, how much would that weigh?

[swarthyguy]

Ah, the Great Asimov.

One of his essays on the Roman numeric system hypothesised that the unwieldiness of Roman accounting played a part in the fall.

We have the zero, but our numbers are huge.

[Maverick68]

Don’t tell him what comes after a gabaloozillion...

[So Cal Rocket]

How much is a Trillion Dollars?

If you opened up a new business on the day that Christ was born... and you were such a lousy businessman that you lost a Million Dollars a Day, every single day, including weekends and holidays...

You still wouldn't have lost a Trillion Dollars yet.

[BreezyDog]

You must have included leap years?....I don’t know :-)

[ETL]

Speaking of the speed of light, ONE light-year, the *distance* light travels in one year at its constant speed of 186,000 miles per second, works out to about 5.9 TRILLION miles.

[OB1kNOb]

Approximately 2.74 billion years B.C.

Another way to consider the magnitude of our debt is to think in terms of lightyear miles. Light travels approximately 5.88 trillion miles in a year. Our current national debt is approximately $12.5 trillion which equates to roughly 2.1 lightyears. If you add in unfunded liabilities estimated to be anywhere from an additional $50 to $75 trillion dollars then our government's spending has warpdrive spent us into deep space somewhere in to the tune of 10.6 to 14.9 lightyears. We are truly "Lost In Space".

[Iron Munro]

Some things in this world are so big they defy description.

[darkside321]

How big is a trillion

---

in the US 1.000.000.000.000
in europe 1.000.000.000.000.000.000

“we” call a US trillion a billion

But in both ways a LOT of trees have to die to print it.
Pretty much wood ;-)