What is a billion?

When one looks in a few dictionaries, the internationally recognized definition of one billion is one million million. So, what is one billion anyway? The answer really comes down to who you want to ask or what you are talking about. In general, the number itself really isn't all that big, relatively speaking. Western cultures tend to look at things in terms of money. Well, Bill Gates only has $57 billion. That's not all that much is it? After all, after a couple of hundred million, what are you going to do with it anyway?

Try looking at it from another point of view. Compare Bills' $57 billion with the number of grains of sand on any small pond-sized beach. The $57 billion does not seem so big after all. Granted, sand won't buy as much as $57 billion, but it can give it a run for fun on the beach.

The Future at Both Ends

Since a billion of whatever is being considered, why not look at both ends of the stick. In each instance, the future is caught up in a billion in some way shape or form. We could just as easily be talking million or trillion, but billion works in either form. Some say that the destiny of humankind is tied to the stars. How many billions of light-years away are the stars? Looking the other direction, how many billionths of a meter thick is the cloth we wear? For that matter, how many billions of atoms will it take to make the fabric, silicon chip, artery, or foodstuff we will wear, use, or eat? As we move forward, a billion does not appear to be that much; it is less then the number of grains of sand or stars that we know about or have here on planet earth.

Passing Time or Stopping It

People tend to obsess about time on this little blue rock we call Earth. "I'm late" or "you are late" is a common refrain. The earth is said to be a bit over 4 billion years old, give or take a few hundred million years. If you'd like to put that into perspective, people have a lifespan, give or take, of just over 2 billion seconds. This may make you feel as if you have a long time here on earth if you count in seconds, but to the earth you were barely here.

Think again about the stars. The nearest stars may be billions of light-years away, but if you think about the time needed to get there, given accepted theory, it is but the wink of an eye.

Perspective Is a Concept

Large numbers are an artificial concept that people need to assign some sort of importance to for comparison. In reality, they are just an artificial construct that we do not completely understand. Sure, we can grasp the apparent meaning of smaller numbers like a billion. They mean a lot of something. However, get into really large numbers and strange things begin to happen that we do not understand. So, when you start thinking a billion is a lot, maybe it's not.