{"id":27,"date":"2009-06-22T09:35:26","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T12:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com.br\/brazillion\/2009\/06\/1000000000\/"},"modified":"2009-06-22T09:35:26","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T12:35:26","slug":"1000000000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/2009\/06\/22\/1000000000\/","title":{"rendered":"1,000,000,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although it is not as large as one brazillion<\/em> (which is 1 followed by as many zeros as it needs), one billion is still pretty huge.
\nIt’s such a large number that our mammal brains have a great deal of difficulty trying to grasp the concept of 1 followed by nine zeros (for all you long-scalers out there, please note that I’m talking about a milliard <\/strong>— a thousand million –, not a million million, which we normal people<\/u> would call a trillion<\/strong>).
\nAt first glance, it may seem a bit useless or even unnecessary to understand such large amounts of zeros, but how are we suppose to comprehend the Avogadro constant, geological eras, the formation of galaxies and even Evolution otherwise?
\nI could tell you that 55g of iron has 600 times a million billion billion atoms until my feet hurt and that wouldn’t mean much to most people, because a number that large is exceptionally hard to visualize.
\nI would have the same problem if I was to discourse about the 4-billion-and-a-bit years the Earth has been around, or say that there are a billion billion planets in each galaxy (which, in turn, exist in even large numbers).
\nCan you imagine how long it took us to go from randomly floating chemicals to our current form as email-checking beings? I certainly cannot.
\nWe are pretty good at understanding “ten of something”, but we lack intellectual capacity to perceive millions and billions.
\nThat’s why we use analogies. For instance:
\nIf you take five minutes to count to one thousand, keeping a steady pace, it will take you one hour to get to 12 thousand and you’ll reach 288 thousand at the end of 24 hours.
\nIn one year, keeping the same rhythm, without ever stopping, you will arrive at 105 million: 365 days couting without rest or pause for breath would get you to a little bit over 10% of one billion, which would only be reached at the end of nine and a half years of incessant counting, at the pace of ten numbers every three seconds.
\nOr you could choose to go a number a second, if you have over 31 years to spare.
\nOne billion minutes ago, around 100 C.E., Greek mathematician Ptolemy was being born, the wheelbarrow had just been invented in China, the last lions in the Balkan Peninsula were dying off, the Kama Sutra <\/em>was starting to have its first pages written in India, bricks were the new trend in Roman housing development and, again in China, paper was though of being a pretty neat new idea.
\nOne billion hours ago Australia was not inhabitated by humans and there was no agriculture and no domesticated animals. We were all basically living in Africa, chipping stones to slice meat off bones and fashion animal hide into early-days togas for our northbound walks into cold places. We would answer to erectus <\/em>rather than sapiens <\/em>and were just starting to develop language and music.
\nA strip of sand 10 meters long, one meter wide and 100 milimeters deep contains aproximately 800 thousand<\/strike> million grains of sand. 80% of a billion.
\nDue the curvature of Earth, It is impossible to see one billion people at the same time. That is so many people that even on the flattest land they would extend past the horizon.
\nThe only way to fit one billion people into one’s field of view is to go up a few hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet<\/strike> 30-meter tree (thanks for the correction, Pierce!), from where they would look like a big blobby mass rather than separate individuals, much like what happens with our skin, which is formed by billions of individual cells.
\nBy the way, one billion cells is equivalent to 350cm\u00b2, or the skin of an adult human torso.
\nIt is not necessary to repeat “one billion” billions of times like I did here in his article. One could also refer to it as: a thousand million, 10^9, one giga, bill, or a goddamn bucket-full.
\n—
\nBy Igor Santos<\/a>, original written here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although it is not as large as one brazillion (which is 1 followed by as many zeros as it needs), one billion is still pretty huge. It’s such a large number that our mammal brains have a great deal of difficulty trying to grasp the concept of 1 followed by nine zeros (for all you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":482,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physical-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/482"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/brazillion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}