Googolplex

A googolplex is the number 10, which can also be written as the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros (i.e., 10 zeros). In 1938, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta coined the term googol; Milton then proposed the further term googolplex to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition "because different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have ... more

A googolplex is the number 10, which can also be written as the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros (i.e., 10 zeros). In 1938, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta coined the term googol; Milton then proposed the further term googolplex to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition "because different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera be a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer.". It thus became standardized to 10 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 numerals (i.e., "10,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than the known universe occupies. An average book of 60 cubic inches can be printed with 5 x 10 '0's (5... less