The United States government just hit a giant record, and it is not the fun kind. The country's national debt reached $40 trillion for the first time ever. Written out, that is a 4 followed by 13 zeros: $40,000,000,000,000.

That number is so huge it is almost impossible to picture. So let's break it down.

First, what is the national debt? Every year, the government spends money on things like roads, schools, the military, and helping people. When it spends more than it collects in taxes, it has to borrow the difference, a little like paying with a credit card. All of that borrowing, added up over many, many years, is the national debt. And it is not sitting still. Right now it grows by about $7 billion every single day.

Okay, but how big is $40 trillion, really? The best way to understand a number this size is to compare it to things we already know. Here are a few.

It's about $117,000 for every person in America. Roughly 343 million people live in the United States. If you split the debt up evenly, every single person, even a baby born this morning, would owe about $117,000.

It doubled in less than 10 years. Back in 2016, the national debt was a little under $20 trillion. In about a decade it has grown to twice that size. Imagine your allowance doubling that fast, except this is money that has to be paid back.

It's more than all the gold ever dug up. People have been mining gold for thousands of years. Add up every gold bar, coin, ring, and necklace ever made, and it is worth around $33 trillion. That is still $7 trillion short of the debt.

It's more than the 500 richest people on Earth, combined. Take the wealthiest 500 billionaires in the whole world and pile all their money into one giant heap. You get about $13 trillion. The national debt is roughly three times bigger than that.

It's bigger than the entire U.S. economy. In one whole year, everything the country makes and sells, every burger, car, movie ticket, video game, and phone, adds up to about $32 trillion. The debt is even larger than all of that put together.

It could build the Space Station more than 300 times. The International Space Station cost about $117 billion to build, making it one of the most expensive things humans have ever created. You could build over 340 of them and still not reach $40 trillion.

It's double what all American families owe. Add up the money every household in the country owes on homes, cars, credit cards, and student loans, and it comes to about $19 trillion. The government owes about twice that much on its own.

So is all this debt a problem? That is where things get interesting, because adults do not agree. Experts and politicians argue about it constantly. Some worry that borrowing this much could cause serious trouble down the road. Others believe a country as large as the United States can manage it. It is one of the biggest money debates in the country today, and one you will probably keep hearing about as you grow up.

Here is the one thing everyone can agree on: $40 trillion is so large that no one, kid or grown-up, can truly picture it. So next time you hear a giant number in the news, try turning it into something you can imagine. It is the best trick there is for figuring out just how big "big" really is.