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2 unusual facts about googolplex


Googolplex

In the PBS science program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Episode 9: "The Lives of the Stars", astronomer and television personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in standard form (i.e., "10,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than is available in the known universe.

The Ziff Who Came to Dinner

However, at the Googolplex Theatre, every kid-friendly movie is sold out, and Rod and Todd will not let Homer see a raunchy comedy called Teenage Sex Wager since it is one of many movies condemned by a Christian publication called "What Would Jesus View?".


James R. Newman

In 1940 Newman wrote (with Edward Kasner) Mathematics and the Imagination in which he identified the mathematical concept of a very large but finite number, which he called "googol" and another large number called "googolplex"—this was the first time this number, and this term, was ever identified.

Names of large numbers

This is a description of what would actually happen if one actually tried to write a googolplex, but different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance.


see also