Today’s expression: to get some sun.

Meaning: to spend time in the sunlight; to get sunburned 

Example: “Your back looks red. Did you get some sun at the beach?”

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Start counting now. Spend several lifetimes counting. Spend 10,000 years counting as fast as you can, and you still won’t make it to 1% of the total number of ants in the world.

How many ants are there?

At least more than 1. We can start there.

Humans have counted more than a million ants. A million has 6 zeros. Are there more than a billion ants? A billion has 9 zeros. Are there more than a trillion ants? A trillion has 12 zeros.

A trillion is a million times a million. 

And yes, there are more than a million times a million ants.

A quadrillion has 15 zeros. And there are more than a quadrillion ants on this planet. The current estimate is 20 times a quadrillion. 

There are over 20 quadrillion ants that make up over 20% of earth’s total animal biomass. 20 quadrillion is 20,000 trillion. 

The total mass of ants on Earth weighs in at about 12 megatons of dry carbon, a standard way of measuring animals’ biomass. Put another way: If all the ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale, they would outweigh all the wild birds and mammals put together.

For every person, there are about 2.5 million ants.

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Brain teaser:

What completes the following sequence?

Important info: The same consonants are represented by numbers 0-9, and all vowels are represented by *.

7**3*6

*41*2*

03**

25**4

9*33*8

*5*42*

?