Return to Archive

I've told you a billion times!

First published by the Energy Syndicate - April 2020

One thousand, one million, one billion – its hard to imagine what one million is and then what that is compared to one billion. This might help:

  1. One thousand seconds = 16.7 Minutes
  2. One million seconds = 11.57 Days
  3. One billion seconds = 32 Years

In the UK the term one billion was used for a million million unlike the US billion which describes one thousand million. Since 1974 the UK Government adopted the US Billion as the standard for the purposes of uniformity. The UK billion in seconds comes to a whopping 31,710 years.