A million and a billion sound almost the same.
Three extra zeros. Scroll down and watch what those three zeros do to time, space and height.
One square is one day
11 days
Count out loud, one number per second, without sleeping. You reach one million in 11 days and 14 hours.
That's the green sliver at the start of this year.
Now keep going until you reach one billion.
Every square is a day of nonstop counting.
31.7 years
A billion seconds is more than three decades. If you start today, you finish somewhere in 2058.
One square is $1,000
$1,000
Let one green square stand for $1,000: ten $100 bills.
$1,000,000
A thousand squares make a million dollars. You can still take it in at a glance.
A billion is a thousand of those blocks.
Keep scrolling. We have to pull back a long way.
$1,000,000,000
Here it is. The million you just looked at is the green speck in the circle.
Stacks of $100 bills, 0.11 mm each
1.09 m
Stack a million dollars in $100 bills and it comes up to your waist.
Now stack a billion.
1.09 km
A kilometre of cash, taller than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on Earth. The million-dollar stack is now a hairline at the bottom.
You now have a feel for a billion. Hold on to it.
Elon Musk is worth
$839,000,000,000
That's 839 billions, according to the Forbes World's Billionaires List 2026. Let's put it in the same pictures.
Each block is $1 billion
The billion again. Each small block inside it is a million dollars.
Musk's fortune is 839 of these.
839 billions
Every pink block is a full billion. The blue one in the circle is the billion that filled your screen a moment ago.
Stacks of $100 bills, 0.11 mm each
Here's the billion-dollar stack, 1.09 km tall. Musk's stack is the pink column. It runs off the screen.
Follow it up. It passes the edge of space at 100 km…
916 km
…and the International Space Station at 408 km. It ends more than twice as high as the station orbits.
Counting to 839 billion, one per second
You'd need 26,587 years. To finish today, you would have started around 24,561 BC, during the last ice age.
Earning it at $1 million a year
You'd need 839,000 years. Our species has existed for about 300,000. Recorded history is the last 5,000.
The same three questions, side by side
| Question | $1 million | $1 billion | Elon Musk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counting, one number per second | 11 days, 14 hours | 31.7 years | 26,587 years |
| A stack of $100 bills | 1.09 m | 1.09 km | 916 km |
| Earning $1 million a year | 1 year | 1,000 years | 839,000 years |
A million is a lot of money. A billion is a thousand of those. Elon Musk has 839 billions.