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FactOfTheDay: Googolplex
posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 12:45PM

If you care to type a googolplex (a pretty big number) onto your harddrive, in normal decimal notation, you'll need at least 20 trillion GB of disk space. (I have a few thousand GB here.)
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posted by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:11PM

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posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 1:17PM

I don't think it matters. ASCII (or xml for that matter) encoding will only change things by a factor of maybe 10ish, compared to encoding it minimally as bits (each bit representing one decimal position). So, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- maybe you only need 2 trillion GB of disk space.

posted by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:22PM

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posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 1:39PM

For the sake of simplicity, say we're typing in a text editor.

(The number of letters in a book is /nothing/ compared to a googolplex :P.)

(Oh, by the way, if you use every subatomic particle in the entire universe, as a decimal position, you, ummm, still wouldn't be able to "write" it out.)

(A googolplex, btw, is /nothing/ compared to Graham's Number.)

** I think my original post was wrong. 1GB = 10^9 Bytes, 1 Trillion = 10^12 (1TB = 1000GB), 1 googolplex = 10^10^100, so you would need 10^(10^100 - 9) GB of disk space, which is a hell of a lot more than the originally stated 2*10^(12) GB. I did say "at least" though :P.

unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:58PM.
Oui. There are only something by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 2:00PM.
unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 2:11PM.
Graham's number, for one, "is by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 2:18PM.
unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 6:07PM.
I have no idea what they're ta by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 6:19PM.

posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 12:52PM

posted by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:14PM

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posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 1:17PM

You just did.

posted by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:23PM

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"Nine exponent nine exponent n by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 1:46PM.
unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:54PM.
Numbers are words, which are l by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 1:58PM.
unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 2:10PM.
Well, you can write/talk more by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 2:38PM.
unavailable by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 6:16PM.
I was referring to the deliber by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 6:31PM.

posted by unavailable on October 13th, 2010 at 1:13PM

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