FEATURED ARTICLE Updated 12/8/2023:

Your One-Billionth Birth-Second

Exercise

How old will you be at the time of your one billionth birth-second? In other words, how many years, months… and so on old will you be during your 1,000,000,000^th second alive?

Facts

1,000,000,000 seconds is in fact a different amount of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds depending on how a “year” and a “month” are defined.

The most common definition, and the one that drives our present-day calendar decisions on leap years, assumes a year is 365.2425 days averaged over 400 years and 30 days on average per month.

Then, commonly, you would be approximately 31 years, 8 months, 7 days, 22 hours, 42 minutes, and 2.5 seconds old.

Thoughts and Opinions

I round this number to 32 years. Then, after 32 years spent alive on Earth, you will have experienced one billion seconds. That’s one billion clock ticks, and for some people almost one billion heart beats. It’s a fun exercise to imagine the length of time for a billion eye blinks, or breaths.

Was your billionth birth-second a significant event? Did it pass by unnoticed? Will there be another one?

If you multiply by 2, you will find the age you will be when you experience your “2 billionth birth-second.” It might be comforting to know you might not miss that one. You will be close to retirement and loved ones will share that one Beatles song with you. Few individuals experience their 3 billionth birth-second. There are special days and there are special seconds.

How old were you when you turned just one-hundred million seconds? That’s 10 times less seconds, so it is 10 times less in years. You were just about 3.2 years old at that time. We all spend our lives aware of time, seconds, and numbers as large as a million all in the relatively advanced age of 100,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 seconds.

How old were you when you turned ten million seconds? Following the trend, you were about 0.32 years or about 4 months old. Most of your significant birth-seconds occurred before you could speak.

If you would believe it, Daniel Bernoulli if he were alive today would be celebrating his 10 billionth birth-second.

Feel free to email me with your thoughts and opinions on this matter at andrew@ahogan.org.

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