Something I just cannot comprehend, yet I have awesome respect for

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Graham's Number.

I'm pretty sure this is the largest number known that isn't infinity. If you have no idea what Graham's number is, just google it, and you'll be pretty shocked if you understand the math behind it.

Every time I try to understand how big Graham's number is, it makes my head hurt, yet I can somehow figure it out and make *some* sense if it. It's weird.

I'm not going to talk about how to calculate Graham's number, because it's pretty boring and very hard to conceptually understand. At least, that's how I see it. You can do that on your own; unless you REALLY want me to try to explain it

In laymen's terms, Graham's number is so ****ing huge that if you had the total number of digits in Graham's number be the size of a Planck length (equal to 1.6*10^-35 meters, which is 10^-20th the size of a proton) fill the entire volume of the observable universe, it would be FAR too small for Graham's number. It's THAT big.

Just some random musings of mine late at night. I love trying to read up on things like Graham's number and trying to understand their true magnitude.

 

[CRASHiC]

I had to watch String Theory's Nova special like 4 times before I could even listen without my brain feeling damaged.

 

[Morrigan]

I'm sorry, no one can beat the
∞

∞ > G

 

[Ice!]

Omg, that's a serious waste of time.

 

[TP]

I looooove thinking about Graham's number. Graham was such a badass for making that number.

 

[Jupz]

I love physics things like this lol. Its not the largest number known (obviously), but its the largest that has been used.

Things like this are amazing. One mole of Rice grains (6x10^23) would cover the whole of Australia one kilometre deep in rice grains. And that number is absolutely nothing compared to grahams number.

 

[Scott!]

I love Avogadro's Number. On Mole Day (10/23), my chem teacher would play the Mole Song, which put the number into visualizations we could semi-comprehend. For example, according to the song, a mole of marshmallows would cover the Earth in a layer 2 miles high. And boy, would that be delicious. Also, a mole of pennies, equally distributed around the world, would make everyone a trillionaire. Now that would be fantastic.

As far as Graham's Number, it's not one that really interests me so much. The universe is so huge without thinking of numbers that don't fit in it. It boggles my mind enough to look at pictures of galaxies and realize that the light that came from them left a billion years ago, and that its journey ended in the Hubble's lens. From such an epic beginning to such a humble end, what a story. It's fascinating enough, and it's something we can see with our eyes, though we don't understand what we see without the aid of physics.

 

[CRASHiC]

The Damon number > Graham number
/britpop jokes

 

[Fly_Amanita]

Graham's number is silly.

 

[Kantō]

i always failed math back in skool. ive never heard of this before, sounds interesting, but way over my head lol.

 

[Sucumbio]

Omg, that's a serious waste of time.

LOL that was funny.

Wow, so there's a number named after me. And it's the largest second only to infinity. I'm impressed! :D

 

[Zook]

I've always found numbers alone to be pretty boring, but whatever floats your boat.

Now, if we had a number of elephants equal to Graham's number, how many observable universes would they take up? That's far more interesting.