Googol

I just had my world thoroughly rocked. I just got out of Sam Milazzo's astronomy class (which, as some of you may know, is an experience in and of itself). We were talking about just how big the universe is. You might be surprised. There are 400,000,000,000 (that's four hundred billion) times the mass of the sun in the Milky Way alone. If I wanted to count to that number, it would take me approximately 67,000 years to reach it, and that's only if I didn't take any breaks to eat, sleep, or breathe. There is a number, which I'm sure most of you have heard of at one time in your life. It's a googol. It's a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Do you know how big a number that is? OK, there are about 10^86 (that's ten to the eighty-sixth) subatomic particles in the universe. 10^100-10^86 is still 10^100! That means 10^86 is NEGLIGIBLE! It doesn't even make a dent in a googol! Here's another way of looking at it: if the universe were packed to the brim with neutrons (no space AT ALL between them), there still would not be a googol of neutrons in the entire known universe. Why, you may ask, do we have such a number if there is absolutely nothing in the universe that would require it? Well, because it's dang cool. And get this: that's not the biggest number we have a name for. That honor is reserved for the googolplex, which is a 1 followed by a googol zeros!! That's right. It's a 1 followed by so many zeros, you can't even write it in scientific notation, because it wouldn't fit in the universe! I have finally given up and conceded that I am, for all intents and purposes, infinitesimally insignificant. Though, to be honest, I'm actually kind of relieved.