In regards to creation, A thought about large numbers and the scale of the universe

[Aggo]

A "Googol", of which the company gets its name, is a one followed by 100 zeros. This can be written out as

"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"

This number alone is so incredibly massive that human brains cannot comprehend its size. The number of atoms that make up the universe is a fraction of a googol.
The "googolplex" is a one followed by a googol zeros. This number is so uncomprehendingly large that simply imagining what it would look like would be impossible. This is why.

Using 12 pt Times New Roman font, a "0" has the size of .125 inches. A googol zeros is as long as 1.25 *1099 inches, 1.0416667 *1098 feet, 1.9728535 *1094 miles, 2.1223564 *1086 astronomical units (The length from the Earth to the Sun), or 3.3560493 *1081 light years.

This number, when written out on standard paper, could circle the Earth 7.9227884 *1089 times, creating a wall so tall that we would not be able to see the top of it. In fact, this wall would be 8.5085661 *1070 lightyears tall, expanding far out past the radius of our observable universe. This number could actually circle our observable universe 1.1687786 *1070 times or, when filling a full piece of paper with only zeros, cover the entire surface area of our visible universe 2.9398387 *1057 times.

When this number is written in a straight line away from us, all protons in our universe will have decayed by the time the light from the last zero in the googolplex will have reached us.

A googolplex is so massively large that trying to imagine what it even looks like is impossible, and yet, when compared to infinity, it is next to nothing.

[Leroy Brown]

If that numbers so large the human mind can't comprehend it how did a human figure it out in the first place?

[Shodan]

This thread is interesting. What I find even more mind-boggling than these numbers (googolplex is hardly the largest defined BTW - last time I checked that honor goes to pretty much any significant value put through Rayo's function) is the way infinity has been defined. Infinity plus one is considered an actual value, but its value depends on which infinity you're going after. Aleph-one or aleph-two? wCK? Bah.

[Dean]

You have to think creatively to understand large numbers. I remember Neil Degrasse Tyson mentioning the US debt which is around, idk, 14/15 trillion big ones. Basically, he explained that Most Americans can't comprehend how LARGE the number is, so they don't realize the shithole we're buried in. We could wrap 15 trillion cheeseburgers around the earth twice, stack them to the moon and back down to Earth.

---------- Post added at 04:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:59 PM ----------

In regards to a googol/googolplex, here's a video.
http://youtu.be/0lFQOmb6mVs

[Aggo]

So far as infinity being measured in different values, I don't know. But the thought of the universe having no end is just as tangible to me as the thought of it having a border somewhere. But if (and its a big but plausible IF) the universe is infinite, that means that the every possible variation of us ever happening theory is true.