How Many Seconds Have You Been Alive?
Tim Harford is an economics journalist who among other things presents the Radio 4 “More or Less” which is an investigative programme about the accuracy of numbers and statistics in the public domain.
I mention him because he was the first person to help me understand the difference between a million and a billion.
He did it by talking about a million seconds against a billion seconds. At one time I thought it would be nice to be a millionaire. Think again.
A million seconds is 11.6 days, give or take. A billion seconds 31.7 years…and a trillion seconds 31,709.8 years. Think about that for a moment. A billion seconds is 31 years, a million – 11 days.
When applied to national debts it makes the mind fizzle. As of September 2023 the UK’s national debt was £2,654.3 billion which I think is 2.654 trillion. Correct me if I’m wrong – just over 84,000 years!
But never mind. The main reason for this somewhat wacky blog is because while pondering these strange facts I came across a website that tells you how may seconds you’ve been alive, and how far we’ve traveled on the planet since your birthday. Our planet is going really fast.
If you can’t wait to find out click here and you will go straight to Michael Carroll’s website where all will be revealed.
Or ponder this. If you live to be 95 you will reach 3 billion seconds old.