Brian Cox says there are two trillion galaxies in the universe that we can see. That's a big number. It seems so interesting to live with large numbers alongside small numbers every day and not think much about it.
There are bigger numbers - the next one is quadrillion, then quintillion and sextillion - I copied and pasted theses as I am not sure I can really type that many zeros accurately:
"We call 1,000,000 a million, 1,000,000,000 a billion, 1,000,000,000,000 a trillion, 1,000,000,000,000,000 a quadrillion, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 a quintillion, and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 a sextillion.
The number 9,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 is 9 sextillion, 600 quintillion."
So while there are bigger numbers, 2 trillion is really big.
What else is there 2 trillion of? Nerve cells in our brains. In terms of the number of cells in the human body there are an estimated 100 trillion cells.
In the human scale of things, it takes 12 days at the rate of one number per second to count out 1 million. I wonder if that's in the Guinness Book of Records.
Similarly, how might we think of the bigness of numbers. Here's a picture of what one trillion pennies looks like.
This picture was taken over 10 years ago when we visited Ott's Greenhouse in Pennsylvania in the spring. It makes me wonder how many pansy flowers are in the picture. What do you think?
