The Googolplex and Other Huge Numbers
1. As kids, we were all taught there's no such thing as "the biggest number," but it turns out this is only partially true. The 'centillion' (a number with 303 zeros) is the highest number recognized in common mathematics. Anything beyond a centillion is considered to be in "the realm of infinity."
2. While not quite as big as a centillion, the "googol" is recognized by some math theorists, but not used in orthodox mathematics. The term was first published in mathemetician Edward Kasner's 1940 book Mathematics and the Imagination. Kasner had asked his nine-year-old nephew to invent a name for a number with 100 zeros, and "googol" was the nonsensical word the boy devised.
3. Without prodding, Kasner's nephew then offered the term "googolplex" for number that would dwarf even the googol. Its size? According to the boy, you write a 1 then as many zeros as you can scribble until you simply can't go on. Kasner felt it needed a more finite description, so he defined the googolplex as a 1 with a googol of zeros after it.
4. According to Kasner's book, if you were to attempt to write out a googolplex, you would not find enough known space to write it. If you wrote one zero per inch, your string of numbers would take you past the universe's most distant known star.
5. The googolplex inspired the name for Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California: the Googleplex...
6. ... and further, it's said that the company name Google originated as a misspelling of the term googol.
7. Mind-boggling example of a giant number, part 1: There are 170 septillion (24 zeroes) ways to play the first 10 moves in a game of Chess.
8. Mind-boggling example of a giant number, part 2: If you wanted to count to one trillion (12 zeros), and you could somehow count 24 hours a day... it would take you 30,000 years.
9. Mind-boggling example of a giant number, part 3: If you somehow got your hands on a quntillion pennies and started laying them out side by side, you could carpet the entire surface of the Earth... twice.
10. Not exhaustive (though quite exhausting) list of big numbers:
- Vigintillion (63 zeros)
- Novemdecillion (60 zeros)
- Octodecillion (57 zeros)
- Septendecillion (54 zeros)
- Sexdecillion (51 zeros)
- Quindecillion (48 zeros)
- Quattuordecillion (45 zeros)
- Tredecillion (42 zeros)
- Duodecillion (39 zeros)
- Undecillion (36 zeros)
- Decillion (33 zeros)
- Nonillion (30 zeros)
- Octillion (27 zeros)
- Septillion (24 zeros)
- Sextillion (21 zeros)
- Quintillion (18 zeros)
- Quadrillion (15 zeros)
- Trillion has (12 zeros)
Sources: http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny; http://www.skygaze.com/content/facts/math.shtml; http://www.weird-websites.com/justweird/weirdnumbers.htm; wikipedia.org.
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