3 ms·
My favorite one is with the 52! seconds: Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. Then walk around the Earth’s equator with one
by svobodamartin 20d ago
My favorite one is with the 52! seconds:
Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0.
Then walk around the Earth’s equator with one step every billion years.
Then, after you make your way around the earth equator (by taking 1 step every billion of years), you take one drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean.
Then, you repeat the process of walking around the equator, and everytime you walk around, you keep draining one singular drop of water.
After the ocean is fully drained, you refill the ocean and put a piece of paper underneath you.
Now, you once again repeat this process of walking, draining, and placing papers.
After your stack of papers has reached the Sun, you repeat another 1000 times.
After all this, you have completed just about a third of the timer.
https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2025/02/26/how-big-is-52/ https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2025/02/26/how-big-is-52/
- davidnc 20d agoFor another perspective, 52! is roughly the number of atoms in a galaxy. Galaxies are really quite large!
- theturtletalks 20d agoThere are more way to rearrange a deck of cards than there are stars in the universe
- ikesau 20d agoHoly hell, this is great. I once made a little tool for getting more intuitive spatial scales for things in the universe at https://observablehq.com/@ikesau/scale-to-the-universe https://observablehq.com/@ikesau/scale-to-the-universe I feel like you could do something similar for these sorts of "fathom this large number" recipes.
- hermitcrab 20d agoI tried something along the same lines, but not just for size: http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/ http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/
- avmich 18d agoI think you might enjoy these stories - https://www.mrob.com/pub/math/largenum.html https://www.mrob.com/pub/math/largenum.html
- svobodamartin 17d agoThat's solid large number's bible, thanks!