Why do we have the number "googol" (not google)? (1 with 100 zeros...)

[roboticsguy1988]

And just when i thought i would have my first day of not learnign something new LOL well all i ahve to say is thats a big number.

[Alex Pelan]

I think, eventually, the 1 to 1000 thread will reach a googol. Alas, that's not one person.

[Ian Curtis]

Then we simply divide the 100 dollars between everyone whose ever posted in it.

[Denman]

it would therefore not be possible to write down or store the digits of a googolplex in decimal notation, even if all the matter in the known universe were converted into paper and ink or disk drives.

i dare you to write a script and try to fill your hard drives with lots of 0's in a text file

[anna~marie]

haha so since I am bored... presenting "1 with 100 zeros..."

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

[Dan Zollman]

Originally Posted by anna~marie

haha so since I am bored... presenting "1 with 100 zeros..."

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Haha...you messed up; you only have 97 zeros there! (I'm sure you just knew that someone would take the time to count)

[anna~marie]

bah!!!
i edited it, sure that i was three over..... *scowl*

[Nick Bailey]

heres a site where some wrote a script to count from 1 to a googol. Needless to say they've barely scratched the surface. http://www.procrastinators.org/googolplex.html

[Dan Zollman]

Originally Posted by anna~marie

bah!!!
i edited it, sure that i was three over..... *scowl*

Actually, you're right; it was 100 zeros in the first place. I couldn't resist the temptation to do that.

[Leo M]

The name “googol” was devised just after WWI by Milton Sirotta, the nine-year-old nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner. It was created to illustrate the difference between a large number and infinity. Other than that, it has no particular use or significance. There are some interesting properties to this number :

It is approximately equal to factorial seventy – 70!

It has only two prime factors, 2 and 5.

In binary, it takes up 333 bits.

A regular polygon that has a googol of sides, and is 10E27 times the size of the known universe, would still appear to be a circle even if we looked on the scale of a Planck length – 1.616E-35 meters.

The number googol is larger than the number of particles in the known universe, estimated at between 10E72 to 10E87.

The “Google” internet search engine was named after the googol, but they made a spelling error, which turned out OK because google.com was available and googol.com was not. The Google headquarters is known as the “Googleplex”, after the number googolplex, which is 10Egoogol, or one followed by a googol of zeroes.

As far as printing out a googolplex, here is an interesting statement by Frank Pilhofer that it can be mathematically proven that it is useless to try to do it:

“However, this program is completely useless, and it is possible to mathematically prove its uselessness. The proof first introduces two corollaries.

Corollary 1
The computing power of microchips doubles every second year.
This statement is also known as "Moore's Law", named after the Intel Co-Founder. It has been empirically shown to be correct for the last 30 years. Actually, the original statement reads "every 18 months," I'm being a little more conservative than that. If you think that the value of two years is incorrect, invent another one. It doesn't make a lot of difference.
Corollary 2
At today's speed, the program will run for 3.125*10^85 years.
The fastest available desktop computers of today will run the program at a speed that allows the printing of about 10 to the power of 7 digits per second. The average year has roughly 3.2*10^7 seconds, so this machine will print about 3.2*10^14 digits per year. We conclude that this machine will need 3.125*10^85 years to finish printing Googolplex.
We now combine these two corollaries in the following mental experiment. Imagine that you do not start the program now, but that you wait two years before starting it. Corollary 1 states that the processor power will have doubled by then, therefore halfing the running time calculated by corollary 2 to 1.5625*10^85 years.
The delayed program that's being started in two years therefore overtakes the program started today, and finishes its computation 1.5625*10^85 minus 2 years ahead of the undelayed program.
Of course, this makes it useless to run the program today, because it would only reproduce the already existing output of the program that's being started in the future. We have therefore shown that the program is useless today.
We complete the proof by iteratively using the above mental experiment on itself. It is easily understandable that it doesn't make any sense running the program as long as the computation time exceeds 4 years. A simple calculation shows that this will be not be the case for the next 282 "life cycles", that is, 564 years.
Until then, we can always overtake computation by running the same program two years later and therefore brand an undelayed program execution as useless.
We can summarize our thoughts in the following, now proven, sentence:
The program is useless today, and will be useless for the next 564 years. qed.
Lucas Watson (lwatkins@scri.fsu.edu) took a different approach, and pointed out that my program will be useless even in a million years, simply because there isn't enough matter to print a Googolplex on (and this fact is unlikely to change). According to him, this idea originated on Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV show.
But who said we have to print Googolplex in decimal? If we switch to base Googolplex, you can print it simply as 10. (suggested by Paul Dourish dourish@europarc.xerox.com). ”

[anna~marie]

Originally Posted by worldbringer

Actually, you're right; it was 100 zeros in the first place. I couldn't resist the temptation to do that.

no fair!!! *pout*

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

It does not seem we need to even use the number googol, petition to eliminate it.now (Lol). It is impossible to practically use the number since there aren't even close to a googol atoms in the universe, it does not make since to even have the number. By the way, I will pay $100 to any (1) person who can write every integer from 1 to a googol

ok thats impossible...well not really impossible but if i started now...i'd have to keep writing until i was like 60 lol i dont kno. i remember my freshman year in math my teacher told us we have the option of writing 1-1,000,000 or just take the end of the semester final. the whole class started writing 1-million and the whole block and everyone just gave up because itd take us like 3 straight months to do and the final was like that week. therefore...i raise the bet lol ill give someone like 1,000,000 dollars if they write 1 to a googol lol

[eapoe21]

Hey, just to help you out, it was Edward Kasner. Carl Sagan then used the term when he son asked him how many stars were in the universe.

[eapoe21]

To help you with your calculations lol it takes about 200 years, counting 24 hours a day to count to a trillion

[Barry Bonzack]

The Internet search engine Google was named after this number. The original founders were going for 'Googol', but ended up with 'Google' due to a spelling mistake. Lawrence E. Page: "Lucas Pereira: 'You idiots, you spelled "Googol" wrong!' But this was good, because google.com was available and googol.com was not. Now most people spell 'Googol' 'Google', so it worked out OK in the end."

In the closing ceremonies, I recal something about people not being able to spell when they used the google search engine. How ironic.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

there are better ways to threaten integers:

Not replying to this letter would be an irrational act

I Shall divide you by zero...