At 21:35 10/29/99 , Acer wrote:
>Is there any quantity of /any/thing in the world tha's google, let alone
>googleplex?
>
>/Acer "steppenwolf" Victoria
>--
><http://www.google.com/>--man's best friend
There *is* some meager, minute OM content hidden in the middle!
I'm struggling to recall the entire story about how it was coined as I
heard it over two decades ago. Its correct spelling is "googol" and it
represents a very, very, very large number; googolplex represents an
enormously much larger number. Both are finite.
The tough part is the etymology. As I recall the word "googol" came from
an American mathematician, Dr. Kasner, who asked his 9 year old nephew to
give a name for a very large but finite number, namely one followed by one
hundred zeroes.
When this was printed (probably in a mathematical journal) some other
mathematician (undoubtedly with a PhD) rose to the challenge of dreaming up
some even huger, but still finite number, and called it a googolplex which
came to have its definition as 10 raised to the googol power, or one
followed by a googol of zeroes. After all, someone with a PhD in
mathematics cannot allow some *other* PhD lay claim to having named a large
finite number when it was so simple to generate one even larger, but still
finite.
Even I, with a lowly BS and MS, and the ego of PhD but without the degree
can can enter the game too and claim to have named a number such as a
"googolgoogolplex" and define it as a googolplex raised to the googolplex
power. Of course this will only last until someone on this list with a
sufficent ego reads this, takes my googolgoogolplex and makes a bigger
finite number. Hint: it's real simple, just come up with your own name and
define it as a googolgoogolplex plus one. See how easy it is? Sorta like
bidding for that Zuiko or OM body you just gotta have on eBay!
To give you an idea of the size of a googol, the estimated quantity of
elementary particles (electron, proton, neutron) in the entire known
(visible by one means or another) universe is 10 raised to the 80th power,
or about 20 orders of magnitude *smaller* than a googol. The space
occupied by the known universe could hold (densely packed) about 10 raised
to the 130th power and is bigger than a googol by about 30 orders of magnitude.
This is all give or take a few orders of magnitude; heck when it's that
enormous it doesn't make a whole lot of difference except to the
cosmologists who are trying to figure out whether the universe will
eventually stop expanding, collapse, and *BIG BANG* again; or if it will
just continue expanding without end until entropy has leveled all the
energy everywhere (however much space "everywhere" is by then).
Of course not many of the rest of us worry much about these things. I'm
not too concerned as I don't think I'll be around long enough to see whose
theory about the whole thing is right or wrong. So I'm glad the world has
some cosmologists around to fret about these things for me. This frees my
poor brain up to contemplate what camera gear I should use tomorrow at my
uncles 85th birthday party (take the MF 645 stuff or just the OM bag) and
prevents suffering from decision paralysis followed by a complete mental
meltdown.
If you think about it, a googolplex is so immense it is not possible to
express it directly (by writing a 1 and writing out all the zeroes). It
must be by reference to some compact abbreviation or compression method; or
by some algorithm that is capable of generating it (of course the universe
would either collapse before then and bang again or entropy would run the
machine out of energy). But even if you could make all the zeroes as small
as electrons, there wouldn't be enough matter nor would there be enough
space in the entire known universe. And *that* is how immensely,
enormously, hugely large a googolplex is!
So, next time you see that coveted 8mm Zuiko fisheye, or perhaps that 40mm
Zuiko "pancake" you've been yearning for come up on eBay, you might
consider bidding a googol on it. Just pray someone else doesn't trump you
with a googolplex and someone after that bid my googolgoogolplex.
Happy Friday
-- John
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|