The difference between a thousand, a million, a billion and a trillion

Humans are very bad at understanding scale. In every day conversation we typically talk about thousands and millions interchangably; likewise millions, billions and trilllions. In reality, these numbers are so vast they're almost meaningless.

A case in point is the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. Bloomberg publishes an index of how much the fortunes of the world's richest people has changed in the last day and the last year. These are billionaires whose net worth can increase or decrease by billions of dollars in a single day. This is something (UK radio talk show host) Nick Abbot talks about a lot.

So here's an attempt to help understand scale. I don't claim this as an original idea (I heard about it on Nick Abbot's show), but it is a "real time" look back a thousand, a million, a billion and a trillion minutes ago from now.

A thousand minutes ago was

A million minutes ago was

The date a billion minutes ago was approximately CE. For context, work began on Roman Emperor Hadrian's Wall around 122 CE.

A trillion minutes ago was approximately years ago, roughly the middle of the Pleistocene ice age