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TECHNOLOGY

10 Enormous Numbers
ZACHS MARCH 12, 2012

One of the first questions that kids often ask is What is the biggest number? This
question is an important step in transitioning to a world of abstract concepts. The
answer is of course that numbers are generally considered endless, but there gets to
be a point were numbers become so big that there really is no point in having them,
they have no real importance outside of the fact that yes technically they do exist. To
make a list like this I could simply write down a massive number for the first number,
and then write +1, +2, +3 and so on for the rest of the list. Instead I chose to take out 10
numbers that do have some effect on the world and place them in ascending order,
giving a brief explanation as to what they are and how they have some relevance on
the world, albeit very small relevance, especially when compared to the size of the
number itself.

10

10^80

Ten to the eightieth power a 1 with 80 zeros after it is quite massive but somewhat
tangible at least from a relatively concrete point of view. This is the estimated number
of fundamental particles in the known universe, and with fundamental particles were
not talking about microscopic particles, were talking about much smaller things like
Quarks and Leptons subatomic particles. The name for this number in U.S. and
Modern British is One Hundred Quinquavigintillion I would write out phonetically how
to pronounce that but I dont have a clue. The concept of the amount of such small
things and how many of them make up the entire universe may seem overwhelming,
but it is the smallest and easiest to understand of the numbers on this list.

One Googol

The word googol, with a slightly different spelling, has become a frequently used verb
in modern times, thanks to a highly popular search engine. The number has an
interesting history which you can find by simply googling it. The term was coined by
Milton Sirotta in 1938 when he was 9 years old. Although this is a relatively abstract
number, only existing for the fact that it technically exists, but it does come up
occasionally in other uses.
Mental Calculator Alexis Lemaire set a world record for calculating the 13th root of a
100 digit number, the 13th root of 8,192 is 2, or 2 times itself thirteen times, 100 digit
numbers are googols, one of the numbers that Lemaire had calculated would have
read (3 googol, 893 Duotrigintillion, ext, ext.) Another use is from about 1 to 1.5 googol
years after the big bang, the most massive black holes will have exploded. These will
be the last recognizable structure of our universe to disintegrate, and once it does the
universe will enter its 5th and final era known as the Dark Era the end of the
universe based on certain scientific models.

8.5 x 10^185

A Plank length is extremely small, approximately 1.616199 x 10-35 meters, or in long

form 0.00000000000000000000000000000616199 meters. There are about a googol of
them in a 1 inch cube. Plank length and Plank volumes are important in quantum
physics branches like string theory evidently sizes this small allow the extra
dimensions to be detected, at least in some theories. How do all these small things
apply to the third smallest number of this list? There are approximately 8.5 x 10^185
plank volumes in the universe. This number is both massive and its practical purpose
relatively non-existent, however it is still simple compared to the rest of the numbers
on this list.

2^43,112,609 1

The third largest number on this list, the number of all the plank volumes in the
universe, consists of 185 digits. This number here consists of almost 13 million digits.
The significance of this number is that it is currently the largest known prime number.
It was discovered in August of 2008 by the Great Internet Messene Prime Search
(GIMPS). From here on the numbers become much more difficult to render.

Googolplex

A lot of people have heard this word as well, fans of the Back to the Future movies may
remember Dr. Emit L. Brown muttering the line shes one in a million, one in a billion,
one in a googolplex. But what is a googolplex? Remember how long a googol is? A one
with a hundred zeros after it, a googolplex is a 1 with a googol zeros after it. How big is
this number? If the entire universe was filled with paper and all that those papers had
written on them were zeros at a size 10 font, it would only be about half the zeros
required to write out this number in the long form. Even writing the number in
scientific notation is not very practical, for a number this large it requires yet another
type of notation, something called a power tower. For example our first number 10^80
is the first part of a power tower, as the power tower grows the next number would be
placed as a superscript above and to the right of the 80. These are not always possible
to write in digital text, so we have to use yet another short hand, the same method
used on a graphing calculator, the symbol ^. So item 10 on this list can be rendered
as so 10^80, or ten to the eightieth. Now with this form of notation we can more easily
write out the googolplex, which is 10^10^100, or ten to the tenth to the one hundredth.
We will also be using these towers for the next few numbers so I hope youre okay with
conceptualizing them.

Skewes numbers

Skewes Number is the upper bounds to the math problem that: (x) > Li(x), a simple
looking enough equation, however Li is a much more complicated equation in its own
right. Essentially Skewes number proves that a number x exists that violates this
rule, assuming that Reimanns hypothesis is true then that number x is less than
10^10^10^36, (most numbers are) the first of Skewes Numbers, much bigger than a
googolplex, noted because of the extra tower. There is also an even large Skewe
number, without assuming Reimanns hypothesis, x is less then 10^10^10^963.

Poincare Recurrence Time

This is very complicated stuff, but the core concept is relatively simple: given enough
time, anything is possible Poincare recurrence time is the amount of time that it
would take for the entire universe to return to a state that is relatively the same as to
what it is today, caused by random quantum fluctuations, or in more simplified terms,
History will repeat itself. The high estimate of how long this will take is
10^10^10^10^10^1.1 years.

Grahams Number

This number is massive in the 1980s it was listed in the Guinness book of world
records as the most massive finite number ever used in a serious mathematical proof.
It was created Ron Graham, as the upper bounds to a problem in Ramsey Theory
involving multicolored hyper cubes. The number is so big even a power tower would be
too cumbersome to represent the number. The only way to easily represent the
number is to use Knuths Up-Arrow Notation and its own equation. Lets go through
this piece by piece.
First Knuths Up-Arrow Notation is a method of writing very large numbers, it would be
much too complicated to explain exactly how the arrows work here, but you can
visualize it this way. 33 translates to 33 or 27, 33 translates to 3^3^3 or
7,625,597,484,987. Now if you were to add another arrow to the number 33, then
the power tower would be over 7.5 trillion levels. This alone is much much bigger than
the Poincare Recurrence time, and you can add an infinite amount of arrows and each
arrow makes the number that much more powerful.
The representation of Grahams number is: G=f64(4), where f(n)=3^n3. The best way to
look at this is in layers. The first layer is 33, which is already a number too massive
to represent in most other forms. The next layer has that many arrows between 3s.
Then take that answer and put that many arrows into the next layer between 3s, and
this goes on for 64 layers. If youre interested the last ten digits of Grahams Number
are 2464195387, no one, not even Graham himself knows what the first digit is.

Infinity

Most people know of this number and it is used in hyperbole all the time kind of like
the number one zillion but its more complicated then most people realize, and if you
thought the numbers that came before this one were strange, this one is even
stranger, and a controversial number too. According to the rules of infinity, there are an
infinite number of odd numbers and even numbers in infinity even though there can
only be half as many odd numbers as total numbers. Infinity plus one equals infinity,
infinity minus one equals infinity, infinity plus infinity equals infinity, infinity divided in
half is still infinity, but infinity minus infinity is not exactly understood, infinity divided
by infinity would probably be 1.
Scientists estimate 1080 subatomic particles in our known universe, but that is the
known universe, or the observable universe. A lot of scientists, however, believe that
the universe is infinite, or if they dont believe this is the case they still accept it as a
possibility. If this is the case then by mathematics alone there must be another Earth
out there where every atom happens to be in the exact same location in relation to
every other atom on Earth as it is in our own. The chances of two carbon copy Earths
are extremely small, however in an infinite universe it not only can occur but it has to
occur, and not only that, there has to be an infinite amount of carbon copy Earths out
there if the universe does in fact go one forever.
Not all people believe in infinity however, Israeli Mathematics Professor Doron
Zeilberger, stated that he feels numbers do not go on forever and there is a number so
large that when you add 1 to it you will go back to zero, however this number is much
higher then anything humans can comprehend, and that number may never be found
or proven, this belief is the main pillar in a mathematical philosophy known as
Ultrafinitism.

+1 Infinity + 1

Sorry, had to do it.

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280 Comments

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Annonymus

2 years ago

Infinity is not a number...

31

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Exiled Phoenix > Annonymus

a year ago

if there are an infinite amount of numbers... then...?

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JoeyP > Exiled Phoenix

a year ago

But infinity is not a specific number. One can only say "approaching
infinity" because no matter what number you have; add one and it is
bigger.
7

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Exiled Phoenix > JoeyP

a year ago

Legitimate point.
2

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Ruz > JoeyP

8 months ago

Nice one!

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Ian > JoeyP

a year ago

Actually Graham's number in some ways may be equal to

infinity and a number I like to call googolplexian (a number with a
googolplex zeros) is basically equal to infinity simply because
they can never be reached. They are in a way all equal. If you
divided a second in relation to a planck and went on "forever"
you simply could not reach any of the 3 no matter how long you
went. Now hypothetically speaking if you went on for Graham's
number planck seconds then sure you have reached it. The
thing is that's just not possible to go on that long (time and
space would probably stop existing by then) or you would just
keep going and going and you would never get that far because
you have more to go. It's just that BIG. Also if you tried to
imagine Graham's number in your mind and didn't die from it and
went on long enough your head would literally collapse into a
black hole and this is not a joke there is math behind it just look
it up. It's like the debt ceiling only with number's. It is so big
going any bigger just doesn't matter because that number in the
first place cant be reached by anything.

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Lewis Jones > Ian

10 months ago

However googolplexian is not equal to Grahams number. And

they aren't infinity or infinite numbers. Because if you add 1 on
to googolplexian, its bigger. And so on. So although it may not
be possible to reach to those numbers, they are still there
2

ruz > Ian

Reply Share

8 months ago

I think this is not right - you can write googolplex and

googolplexplex(what you call 'googolplexian') - you just need
lots of time!

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Mike > ruz

3 months ago

If you mean in long form then uh no, unless you find another
universe to do it in. You see, our current universe will have long
descended into darkness before you'd have gotten the merest
speck of those numbers written out.

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Lewis Jones > Exiled Phoenix

9 months ago

An infinite amount of numbers means the amount of numbers is

unlimited/numbers go on forever

Ryanlauph

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2 years ago

This article is so badly written it's unreadable.

You need an editor.
14

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Michael Jackson

a year ago

Yep .. Close to how many records I sold

7

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riosrock12

2 years ago

this is zillion:
1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
7

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Ruz > riosrock12

8 months ago

I disagree with you. A zillion is not a number!

2
Mike

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2 years ago

You *seriously* underestimated the amount of space to write down a Googolplex. If

you assume 10^80 elementary particles in the observable universe and wrote a zero
on each particle, you'd need another 10^20 (100 quintillion to be precise) universes
each the size of of our observable universe to write the number down in long form.
Remember, each time the exponent number increases by 1 (i.e. 10^80 to 10^81) it
multiples the whole number by a factor of 10. Just saying..
7
Stefan

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3 years ago

Loved the list!

Only infinity is not a number.
Infinity+1= Undefined
Infinity-Infinity=Undefined
One has to use limits to define these "equations"
Lim n+1 = Infinity
n->Inf.
Just for those who are interested
7

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another annonymus > Stefan

infinity
infinity
infinity
infinity

- infinity = 0
/ infinity = 1
* infinity = infinity
+ infinity = infinity

a year ago

infinity + infinity = infinity

infinity ^ infinity = infinity
20 / 0 = 20
20^0 = 20
just my opinion on famous maths problem like zero and infinity

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Anon > another annonymus

9 months ago

You can't use operations like addition and multiplication with infinity
because infinity is not a number; it is a concept. You also can't divide
by zero because there is no number you can multiply 0 by to get 20. Go
ahead and try it. Also, 20^0 is clearly not 0, it is 1. Any number, except
0, to the power of 0 is 1.
3

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DMFW > Anon

6 months ago

And what's a number if not a concept? Just because infinity

doesn't behave like other numbers doesn't make it "not a
number". Zero doesn't behave like other numbers. Neither does
the square root of minus 1 or pi (in different senses of course). If
you can do maths with it, it's a number. You can do maths with
infinity (of a kind). Cantor showed the way...

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rusty shackleford > DMFW

a month ago

Infinity is not a number. See my post above.

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Ruz > Anon

8 months ago

True... but it is also a number.

Pangloss > Stefan

Reply Share

a year ago

Infinity +1 is defined, so is 1+infinity. You don't need limits to discuss infinity.

There is an entire calculus of infinte numbers. That of course depends on
which infinity you are talking about. It is obvious to see that there must be an
infinite number of infinite numbers.

Utah Larry

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3 years ago

There are three kinds of people, those who understand math and those who don't. And
I'm one of 'em.
6

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Infinitely anonymous

2 years ago

infinity is what you call an unending string of numbers

5

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riosrock12

2 years ago

should be top 12
2

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riosrock12

2 years ago

also wut about centillion?

2

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riosrock12

2 years ago

zomg it should be top 11! the 5th should be mourers number 4th zillion 3rd grahams
number 2nd infinity 1st +1 Infinity + 1
2

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Lewis Jones > riosrock12

10 months ago

But infinite is not a number. See my other posts and understand why.
1
Johnny

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2 years ago

YES IT IS INFINITY IZ A NUMBA

3

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Lewis Jones > Johnny

10 months ago

But it is not. Is there any way of using 'infinity' in numerical forms? It is not
possible to use infinity in a mathematics equation as infinity is a word to
describe something thats never ending. If a plank of wood went on for infinity
miles then it would go on forever. It will go on for so many miles there isn't a
number for the amount of miles because there is no amount of miles. It goes on
forever. If your playing mario and you have infinite lives that means you have
unlimited because lives would be there no matter what.
2

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dmfw > Lewis Jones

6 months ago

There are all sorts of subtle ways of using transfinite numbers which
Cantor explored for the first time. It is possible to do maths with these
concepts and whilst infinity (strictly there are many infinities, but for
most purposes the first one will do) is not a normal number it is still a
number of a kind to which extensions of arithmetic apply...

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Lewis Jones > Johnny

9 months ago

You've got to be kidding me...

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rusty shacklefordf

a month ago

Yes, infinity is not a number. A number is concrete, specific. You also have different
types of infinity, i.e. countably infinite and uncountably infinite. The set of natural
numbers is countably infinite. However, the set of numbers in the interval (0,1) is

numbers is countably infinite. However, the set of numbers in the interval (0,1) is
uncountably infinite.
1
Ruz

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8 months ago

googolplex = 10^googol
googolplexplex = 10^googolplex
googolplexplexplex = 10^googolplexplex
etc...
1

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Lewis Jones

10 months ago

Infinite is not a number. It is used as a word similar to forever. There are an infinite
amount of numbers so that also means numbers go on forever. That doesnt make
infinite a number. If something moves for an infinite amount of time it means it will move
for ever. And that doesn't mean it will move for infinite hours or any other measure of
time because infinite isn't a number. Infinite could just mean forever in some
perspective but it isn't just that I know. But infinite is not a number and can't be used in
a complete and legit mathematics equation.
1

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Ruz > Lewis Jones

8 months ago

Why not? Why? Whats a number? Explain what is a number? Here:

A finite number: Used to count ,add,measure,multiplication and more...
A infinite number - infinity!!!!
*Well infinity is used in limits,you need to learn.

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Lewis Jones > Ruz

8 months ago

Imagine there is infinity particles in the world. You can write 1 number
on each particle. Specify the amount of particles you would need to
write down infinity in numerical form. (you can't say infinity)

MrCake000

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a year ago

(Infinite+1)-(Infinite+1)
=(Infinite)-(Infinite)
=0
As you see infinite is not a number and subrtacting two infinite is just as like
subtracting A-A and it is equal to nothing or Zero but as many peapole says infinite is a
number think you are subtracting 1-1 it will give zero so the answer is Zero SO
SIMPLE
And whiy infinite minus infinite is 1 how the hack is that possible this would be just like
1-1=1 it doesn't make sense lol
1

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jefjkjsdkfj

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2 years ago

you're such a dumb-ass infinity plus one is still infinity and 0 and infinity are concepts.
1

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careytommy

3 years ago

#3 was totally crazy!

1

Tony

Reply Share

3 years ago

Number ten, shouldn't that be to the power of minus 80, if it is a sub atomic particle?
1

krleblok94

Reply Share

3 years ago

The 1st on this list should be the number that is so large, that when you power zero to
that number, it gives a positive number.
1

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Lewis Jones > krleblok94

9 months ago

Every positive number to the power of zero gives an answer of one. Do some
research and come back.

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Ruz > Lewis Jones

8 months ago

True.

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jack54 > krleblok94

a year ago

That would be every positive number... 1^0=1

Ed

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19 days ago

The article states, "in an infinite universe it not only can occur but it has to occur..."
However, one can have an infinite number of whole numbers without including the
numbers 1 to a googolplex (a number larger than the number of atoms in the known
universe). After subtracting those numbers or starting the set at googolplex + 1, an
infinite number of whole numbers still remains, so infinity is not necessarily all
inclusive. A particular case does not have to occur.

rust

Reply Share

a month ago

What the hell is "ext, ext"? More than that, the author should go back to grade school
(that he probably didn't finish) and learn basic GRAMMAR. I can't bear to read
supposedly scientific articles written by people who don't know the difference between
"its" and "it's". By the way, not "33 or 27", but "3^3 or 27".
Check your work!

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Jamie Maddux

3 months ago

How many digets are in the legendary Graham's number

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horst

3 months ago

what about

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Paul Gardner

6 months ago

As others have said, Infinity is not a number. Period. Also, you forgot TREE(3) which
is FAR larger than Graham's number.

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