Dare I Say It? Dare, Dare!

Dare you even think the whole universe is just here for us?

An idea of the scale of numbers and what they mean, from a summary of a Neil deGrasse Tyson talk, reminiscent of the “powers of ten.” There’s a real kicker at the end.

50 billion: This is what Bill Gates was worth before the recession. To understand this, imagine you make a reasonably good living in the low six figures. With such an income you would be too busy to stop and bend over to pick up a dime, but you would stop for a quarter. By scaling this number up to Gates’ wealth, he would be too busy to bend over and pick up … $45,000.