Mucking about with numbers

I frequently find myself annoyed when commentators on TV and in newspapers refer to things like the United States’ debt ceiling as being astronomically huge.

• US Gross Debt stands at around 14.34 trillion USD (1.424E+13) to those who prefer Scientific Notation.
• There are around 400 billion (4E+11) stars in the Milky Way (our Galaxy).
• starregistry.co.uk charges 49.95 GBP (80.84 USD, 8.084E+10 USD) to register a star

It seems quite clear to me that the US government could pay off its debt, and more, by selling off just 45% of the stars in our Galaxy, or maybe a few more if they want to undercut the competition. Now, how’s that for an astronomical number?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 11:42 am and is filed under General Rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.