What do Googol and Googolplex mean?

short answers for big questions

The word googol was invented by the American Mathematician Edward Kasner in order to represent the number `10^100`. This is the same of writing number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Regarding Maths the number isn't useful at all and it is only used to represent a really big number, but it is even far from the infinite.

Let´s see some curiosities concerning this number:

  • The number of thousandths of second that have passed since the beginning of the universe (about 14 billions of years) is far away from being a Googol;
  • Neither the number of ocean drops nor the number of sand grains of our Planet comes closer to this number;
  • The Googol number equals approximately 70!;
  • According to the binary system, we need to have 333 bits to figure it out;
  • The creators of Google Search Engine based themselves on Googol so as to show the immensity of the Internet.
infinite symbol

If we look at the Googol number as being so big, so we have to face the Googolplex one as gigantic since it means `10^text(googol)`.



escrever carta

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