FROM GOOGOL TO MEGISTONE, THE LARGEST NUMBERS EVER SEEN IN THE UNIVERSE
Everything about us is made up of numbers and even the Universe itself is explained - at least in part - thanks to mathematics. There are important numbers in the cosmos, very large numbers, beyond all imagination , so much so that we have decided to tell you about them, where possible, and make you feel incredibly small compared to the spectacularity of mathematics and the numbers that surround us, we are made of. Obviously we start immediately in a big way, because the road ahead of us is very long (and full of zeros).
Million
An undoubtedly important number. Many aspire to achieve it
when it comes to salary , but obviously everything is relative. Does it seem
like an unreachable number? Perhaps speaking of money, yes, but certainly
nothing "impossible". For example, we breathe 14-18 times every
minute on average, with about 960 breaths every hour (on average). Multiplying
the time of one day by 24, we arrive at 23,040 breaths per day.
In a year, on average, almost 9 million breaths are taken .
Not only that, we blink 15-20 times a minute, 10,000 times a day and more than
six million times a year. In short, our body reaches one million safely and
without problems. A million planets, all capable of supporting life, could
theoretically orbit a supermassive black hole ( such as the one at the center
of the Milky Way, for example ).
Billion
Another incredibly large number, but one that we can
certainly still find in our world. There are billionaires, men who have an
almost infinite wealth and who, most likely, could never spend it all. A small
mountain has a mass of one billion tons . There are billions of worker ants in
the largest ant colony in the world, which covers nearly 6,400 km of the
Mediterranean coast.
Every year billions of kilograms of plastic waste enter
oceans around the world, according to National Geographic (a sobering fact!).
According to these studies, about 40% of all plastic in the world is produced
for packaging and over 80% of the plastic used is not recycled. Furthermore, by
2050, there will be more plastic than fish in our seas .
Trillion
A 2010 study estimated the number of stars in the observable
universe to be 300,000 trillion. There are also 3 trillion trees in the world .
Since the last ice age , 11,000 years ago, humans may have already removed 3
trillion trees, the BBC reported. Furthermore, this order of magnitude is used
in computer science, in the big data field; 2.5 trillion bytes have been
created every day since 2019.
Quadrilliar
Inside the Earth there could be a quadrillion tons of
diamonds; located approximately 145-240 km below the surface of the Earth and
are found under most continental tectonic plates. How do we know ? A group of
scientists found that the velocity of the seismic waves - arriving from this
area - matched those found for virtual rock models composed partly of diamonds.
An incredibly large number, are you starting to have a hard time quantizing
everything ? This is just the beginning.
Googol
We are talking about a large, extremely large number. It is
easy to write it in exponential format: 10 ^ 100 . It is a "one"
followed by a hundred "zeros". Even with just one googol, we are
faced with a number that is greater than anything used to describe the Universe
we understand.
Keeping in mind that the mass of a proton (and neutron) is
1.7 x 10 -24g, we can deduce that the number of baryons present in the Universe
is about 10 ^ 80 ; a large number, but substantially smaller than a googol; to
be exact, one hundredth of a billionth of a billion googol.
Googolplex
A googolplex is an integer expressible with 1 followed by a
googol. Put very succinctly, we can say that a googolplex is equal to 1
followed by 10 billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion
billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros .
If you fill the entire observable universe with fine dust
particles of about 1.5 micrometers, the total number of combinations in which
these particles can be arranged equals one googolplex, according to astronomer
and astrophysicist Carl Sagan. The googolplex was introduced by Edward Kasner,
after defining the googol, and is one of the biggest numbers that has been
given a name ... but it is certainly not the winner of this ranking.
Megistone
Surely your brain will no longer be able to quantify these
numbers, but there is still more: the megistone. Such a number in mathematics
has no particular meaning and is definitely useless for measuring any quantity
in reality.
The order of magnitude of the megistone could be comparable
to the number of electrons that could exist throughout the time in the universe
, but we are talking about pure speculation. Megistone is also one of the
largest finite integers named and one of the largest that can be represented by
a single symbol. But this number is only in second place.
Graham's number
Think of the largest number you can imagine. Well, the
Graham Number is so large that it is impossible to imagine. In mathematics .
This figure, named in honor of Ronald Graham, is considered the first number of
inconceivable magnitude to be used in a serious mathematical proof. Like many
other large numbers, a complete representation of it in decimal notation is
scientifically impossible.
The incredible thing is that the space needed to store such
a number would be enormously greater than that of the entire known universe .
Its size is such that it is not possible to give an idea of its actual size in
non-mathematical terms.
