I like my eyes, rarely have they led me wrong. When it comes to the matter of size, no written expression compares to the breathtaking moment of
beholding something truly colossal through your eyes. Case in point:
Just for fun, remember the number 257 for the purposes of this comparison. Now, the National Debt is about 16.5 Trillion, but lets take The US
Total Debt
When I took the screenshot below, this is what it looked like:
58 Trillion'ish
I took this image from the link below, click on it to watch the national debt whirling away yourself:
This is the galaxy we live in, The Milky Way, it's huge...100,000 light years across, (use the slider)
How big is it Lone?
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy 100,000–120,000 light-years in diameter containing 200–400 billion stars. It may contain at least as
many planets, with an estimated 10 billion of those orbiting in the habitable zone of their parent
So many it gives a 'milky' appearance. So lets factor out dwarf stars etc, and just claim 225 Billion stars.
Now here comes the first visual part, what does that look like? We have all seen images of our galaxy like the above photo, but lets get closer.
Gander at the photo below (use the slider)
This is a high resolution photo of our galaxy, on edge. Note the inset picture upper right corner, the green dot represents the sample area that this
entire image comes from.
Soak that in for a moment, you're looking across thousands of light years and stars. source
I know, been there done that...stay with me.
Watch this VERY short video representing that image but at a much greater resolution, lets fly into the center of it.
Still with me? Now, click this link to use the interactive tool to zoom in as far as you can to any spot you choose in our galaxy. Zoom in as far as
you can, get the idea of the vast size of it all. IIP MooViewer
Imagine the stars are our dollars...Now do you see the size of our US Total Debt?
You shouldn't because remember there are only 200 billion to 400 billion stars there.
The US Debt is over 58 Trillion according to the meter.
So what does that look like? Guessing there's only 225 billion stars in the Milky Way you need that number I mentioned earlier
You need 257 Milky Way Galaxies!
Think about it... I mean, really?
edit on 24-10-2012 by Lonewulph because: (no reason given)
well if you take rough estimates, you can say 10 billion ounces of gold is what has been produced by all of man kind ever (taken from various
websites), If im not mistaken that's actually less gold than all of the us debt or damn near it.
How is that even possible, its fake, thats how, all of it is fake.
It's pretty mind boggling to see it in those terms. People just can't relate anymore, to just hearing or reading the numbers in the news.
I do believe that while most people claim they do care about this, there is little concern. They are more worried about their own debts, which are
much closer to home.
The debt is real. The debt won't matter much though, as long as no one has to pay it all off at once. The debt breeds wealth. The debt is needed
to fuel the engine of the world economy. The problems come from downturns and recessions, when real cash is needed to continue funding the economy.
After a recession, more debt can then be aquired, to add more fuel to the fire. Of course, just like in everyones home life, taking more debt than
can be paid back in a resonable time only leads to trouble.