Googol Totally Explained

Everything about Googol totally explained

A googol is the large number 10¹⁰⁰, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (in decimal representation). The term was coined in 1938 by Milton Sirotta (1929–1980), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).
   Googol is of the same order of magnitude as the factorial of 70 (70! being approximately 1.198 googol, or 10 to the power 100.0784), and its only prime factors are 2 and 5 (100 of each). In binary it would take up 333 bits. A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other incredibly large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Edward Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it's sometimes used in teaching mathematics.
   A googol can be written in conventional notation as follows:
ť 1 googol

   = 10¹⁰⁰ ť = 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Its official English number name is ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.

Googolplex

A googolplex is the number one followed by one googol zeroes, or ten raised to the power of one googol: ť 10^googol = 10^(10¹⁰⁰).

In the documentary, physicist and broadcast personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in numerals (for example, "1,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than the known universe occupies.

Googol and comparable large numbers

A googol is greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which has been variously estimated from 10⁷⁹ up to 10⁸¹ . Less than a googol Planck times have elapsed since the Big Bang (the current figure stands at around 8×10⁶⁰ Planck times). From the previous two figures, it can be seen that a list of where every particle is at every possible discernible unit of time since the Big Bang would contain over a googol entries, but still far less than a googolplex: around 8 × 10¹⁴⁰.
A little googol is 2¹⁰⁰ (about 1.268), or 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376, while a little googolplex is

2^

, that is, one googol in base 10⁸ On a practical level, googol is perhaps the most worthless number in existence (next to the Shannon number).

In popular culture

Googol was the answer to the million-pound question: "A number one followed by 100 zeros is known by what name?" on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when Major Charles Ingram allegedly attempted to defraud the quiz show on 10 September 2001. The other options were a megatron, a gigabit or a nanomole. Googol is one of the 336 vocabulary words in the board game Balderdash, and their definition on the back of the card is "The number one followed by 100 zeros."
   In the January 23, 1963 Peanuts strip, Lucy asks Schroeder what the chances are of them getting married, and Schroeder responds "Oh, I'd say about 'googol' to one."
   In an episode of the animated series, the "Gaminator" video games system is said to have a "3-googolhertz processor."
   "A googol is precisely as far from infinity as is the number one." — Carl Sagan, The company name Google is a misspelling of the word "Googol" made by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as described in the book The Google Story by David A. Vise.

Further Information

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