Researchers at the Universities of Hong Kong and Würzburg, Germany have addressed a question that no one asked, “How many ants are there on Earth?” The answer: 20 quadrillion. It’s difficult to grasp the enormity of such a number. The authors of the study that painstakingly added up the ants call it “20 thousand million millions, or in numerical form, 20,000,000,000,000,000 (20 with 15 zeroes).” The researchers warn that figure is a “conservative” estimate.