Big Numbers
There are lots of numbers in this world; big numbers, small numbers, odd numbers, and whole numbers.
But today, let's talk big numbers.
Big numbers
Depending on who you are and what you're dealing with, large numbers can begin anywhere from one thousand (1,000) to one million (1,000,000). But certainly the largest group of numbers begins with one Billion.
Billion … 1,000,000,000
Trillion …1,000,000,000,000
But we've only just begun:
Quadrillion … 1,000,000,000,000,000
Quintillion … 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Septillion …. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Crazy, eh?
The big leagues
And yet, we're still not yet in the big leagues. Consider the number Googol (Not to be confused with its homophone Google). Googol has no less than 100 zeros in it.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The story has it the mathematician, Edward Kasner, asked his 9-year-old nephew for a good name for a really big number. Thus, we get Googol.
How big is Googol? Make a box wide enough to nicely fit between the Earth and the nearest galaxy far away and fill it with tiny grains of pollen. Repeat 100 Quintillion times and you will have a Googol number of pollen grains.
Yet even Googol must take a distant back seat to its rich relation, Googolplex. Googolplex is a 1 followed by a Googol number of zeros. (Forget it, I'm not printing that one out.)
Will this madness never end!
Sadly, no. This is where the concept of infinity comes in.
In the Movie Infinity, Richard Feynman (played by Matthew Broderick) asks a boy "Did you know there are more numbers than numbers?" He then has the boy give him a series of numbers and showed for any give number one can turn around and produce another, even bigger number. The boy then asks if there is a biggest number to which Feynman replied: "How can there be?"
So numbers are forever.
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