Googolplexiglass

Every once in a while, we all need big numbers to properly express ourselves - right? Because you have to repeat yourself for the gazillionth time, because you don't feel like packing the whole fucking shitload of stuff into boxes, because someone has been working on your nerves for you don't know how long.

Next time, you may want to use the word 'googolplex', which is a really big number. Interestingly big in fact, which is why I will devote a rather nerdy blurb to it. The term was cornered by a nine-year-old (Milton Sirotta), who meant to define 'a number which is equal to one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired'. His uncle, Edward Kasner, then formalized this definition, 'because different people get tired at different moments'. No shit, Sherlock.

But how do you define googolplex? Let us first consider an analogy: we all learned at kindergarten that 10 to the power 2 is 100. Which can be written as the number 1 followed by 2 zeroes. Which is not that much, unless you feel like using it as the number of times you had to read the previous sentence before it made sense to you. However, if we would consider the number 10 to the power 100, that would already be much more. Although you could still write this number explicitly. Agreed, it's not exactly the most exciting thing to do, but one could easily do this in less than a minute. Or write it in words, because 10 to the power 100 is called googol.

Now imagine writing down a number which is defined as 10 to the power googol. That means: the number 1 followed by googol zeroes. For some strange reason, this sounds doable, doesn't it? Boring as hell, surely, but doable. The thing is, this number is so huge that it is physically impossible to write down. First of all, assuming that you can write two digits per second, it would take you more than 10 to the power 92 years. Which is way more than the estimated age of our universe. Secondly, assuming that you would write one digit per atom - too small to read, by the way - you wouldn't even have enough space to write the zeroes down. Even if you would zoom down to Planck spaces - the smallest physically measurable volumes - you would still not have enough space for all the digits. Leave alone ink and pens...

So next time you need a really big number to express yourself, I've got one word for you: googolplex. Always nice to get a blank stare from people, politely nodding and checking their iPhone's Wiki-page when you proudly walk away.