A CURIOUS CALCULATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2440, 13 June 1922, Page 4

A CURIOUS CALCULATION.

The following’, from' “Novelties and Curiosities” for the year 1863, is interesting:—“The simple interest of one cent at 6 per cent, per annum from the eommeeement of the Christadn era to the close of the year 1863 would be but the trifling sum of a little over £3; but if the same principal, at the same rate of interest had been allowed to accumulate for the same period at compound interest, it would require the enormous number of 84,840 billions of globes of solid gold, each equal to the earth in magnitude, to pay the interest; and if the sum were equally divided among the inhabitants of the earth, estimatd at 1,000,000,000, every man woman and child would receive 84,840 golden worlds of inheritance. Were all these globes placed side by side, in a direct line, it would take lightning itself, which can girdle the earth in the wink of an eye, 73,000 years to travel from end to end. And if a Parrot gun were discharged at one end, while a man was stationed at the other —light travelling at 192,000 miles a second, the initial volocity ‘of a cannon'ball being 1,500 ft a sec., and sound moving through the atmosphere at 1,120 ft in a second —he would see the flash after waiting 110,000 years; the ball would reach him in 74 billion years;, but he would not hear the report till the end of 1,000 million centuries. Again, if all these masses of gold were fused into one prodigious ball, having the sun for its centre, it would reach out into space, in all directions, 1,732 million miles, almost, reaching the orbit of Herschel or Uranus. And if the interest were continued until the end of the present century, it would entirely fill up the solar system, and ,even encroach 500 millions of miles on the domains of the void beyond the planet Neptune, whose orbit, at the distance of 2,850 millions of miles from the sun, gneircles bur whole svsfem of worlds. '