1000000000 (number) - Sense of Scale

Sense of Scale

The facts below give a sense of how large 1,000,000,000 (109) is in the context of time according to current scientific evidence:

• 109 seconds is 114 days short of 32 calendar years (≈ 31.7 years).
• About 109 minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing and Christianity was emerging. (109 minutes is roughly 1,900 years.)
• About 109 hours ago, modern human beings and their ancestors were living in the Stone Age (more precisely, the Middle Paleolithic). (109 hours is roughly 114,000 years.)
• About 109 days ago, Australopithecus, an ape-like creature related to an ancestor of modern humans, roamed the African savannas. (109 days is roughly 2.7 million years.)
• About 109 months ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth during the late Cretaceous. (109 months is roughly 82 million years.)
• About 109 years ago, the first multicellular eukaryotes appeared on Earth.
• The universe is currently thought to be about 13.7 × 109 years old.

In terms of distance:

• 109 inches is 15,783 miles (25,400 km), more than halfway around the world and thus sufficient to reach any point on the globe from any other point.
• 109 metres is almost three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
• 109 kilometres is over six times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

In terms of finance:

• The possession of assets with total value of 109 United States dollars would place a person among the world's wealthiest individuals.
• As visualized in a work by artist Michael Marcovici, this amount of money in stacks of hundred-dollar bills can fit on twelve wrapped pallets.

In terms of area:

• A billion square inches would be a square about one half mile on a side.
• A piece of finely woven bed sheet cloth that contained a billion holes would measure about 500 square feet (46 m2), large enough to cover a moderate sized apartment.

In terms of volume:

• There are a billion cubic millimeters in a cubic meter.
• A billion grains of table salt or granulated sugar would occupy a volume of about two and a half cubic feet.
• A billion cubic inches would be a volume comparable to a large commercial building slightly larger than a typical supermarket.

In terms of natural landscape; a small mountain, slightly larger than Stone Mountain Georgia, United States, would weigh (have a mass of) a billion tons.

In terms of count:

A is a cube; B consists of 1000 cubes of type A. C consists of 1000 Bs; and D 1000 Cs. Thus there are 1 million As in C; and 1,000,000,000 As in D.