Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: 1,000,000,000 , i.e. one thousand million , or 10 9 (ten to the ninth power ), as defined on the short scale . This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of English; it has long been established in American English and has since become common in ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 10 December 2024. See also: Orders of magnitude (numbers) and Long and short scales Natural number 1000000000 List of numbers Integers ← 10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5 10 6 10 7 10 8 10 9 Cardinal One billion (short scale) One thousand million, or one milliard (long scale) Ordinal One billionth (short ...
Thus, a billion is 1000 × 1000 2 = 10 9; a trillion is 1000 × 1000 3 = 10 12; and so forth. Due to its dominance in the financial world (and by the US dollar ), this was adopted for official United Nations documents.
Per Forbes (April 2024) [1]; Rank Rank per capita Country/Territory Billionaires Rate - World 2,781: 0.343 1 11 United States 813: 2.420 2 53 China 406: 0.288 3 58 India 200: 0.144
The observable universe spans an incredible 93 billion light years (approximately 8.8 × 10^26 meters) and hosts around 5 × 10^22 stars, organized into roughly 125 billion galaxies (as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope). As a rough estimate, there are about 10^80 atoms within the observable universe.
Each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 British English word billion (10 9 in the short scale). The term billion originally meant 10 12 when introduced. [5] In long scale countries, milliard was defined to its current value of 10 9, leaving billion at its original 10 12 value and so on for the larger numbers. [5]
This is now the meaning in both American and British English. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, i.e. 10 18 (ten to the eighteenth power), as defined on the long scale. This is one million times larger than the short scale trillion.
Many people have no direct experience of manipulating numbers this large, and many non-American readers may interpret billion as 10 12 (even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school); moreover, usage of the "long" billion is standard in some non-English-speaking countries. For these reasons, defining the word may be ...