BBC 4 Radio takes on the number trillion

LONDON, May 7 The producer of the BBC Radio 4's "More or Less" show, Michael Blastland, and his London team are taking on the challenge of describing the term "Trillion." Besides being the mortgage debt in Britain, 1 trillion is a number with 12 zeros after it, the BBC reported.

Blastland said there is basic agreement in the world that a trillion is 1,000 billion and 1 billion is 1,000 million.

"When you hear a politician, business leader of economist using the word trillion, they are talking about a number with 12 zeros," he said. He used some examples to describe how large a trillion is.

"It is estimated you can get 50,000 pennies into a cubic foot -- a trillion pennies would fill two St Paul's Cathedrals," he said. Also, a million seconds equals 11.5 days, a billion seconds equals 32 years and a trillion seconds comes to 32,000 years.

His last calculation states that "if you take the typical annual salary as £25,000 ($49,800) a year -- how long would it take you to spend a trillion pounds if you spent £25,000 a day?" The answer is 109,000 years, said Blastland.

Copyright 2007 by UPI

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