And if you consider that there is an infinite number of whole numbers, between each of those infinite whole numbers, there is an infinite number of fractions...
Because it sticks in my head the most, I believe that this was the first episode of Cosmos I watched back in '80. It also introduced me to classical music. The Haydn Trumpet Concerto remains my favorite piece. Thanks, Dr. Sagan!
Genius. I need to buy this series on DVD. I've forgotten how much pure intellectual gold is in it. Thanks asantos for the upload. I was laughing all the way through. Carl = legend x 10 ^ Googplex.
RIP Carl Sagan. As a young person at the time, I found his series, Cosmos,to be thoroughly enthralling. It ignited in me an insatiable desire to learn about Science. He was a superlative teacher and one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century. A true genius.
Challenge accepted: A little while ago, I printed out the largest prime number (because I'm a big nerd) on standard 8.5x11 paper at 3-point font, with half-inch margins. Tiny, but still large enough to read by the naked eye (and large enough for the printer to print legibly). It took about 175 pages, front and back. The largest prime is 22,338,618 digits long, giving 22,338,618 digits / 175 pages. 22,338,618 is 10^7.35, which means I need 10^92.65 times as many pages as before to print a googleplex. 175 pages x 10^92.65 is 10^94.89 pages. A single page is about 30 mm^3 in volume. Thus, this would require a volume of 30 mm^3 / page * 10^94.89 pages is 10^96.37 mm^3 total. One light-year is 9.46 x 10^18 mm, so that equates out to volume of 2.77 x 10^39 ly^3, which is a cube 140 TRILLION light-years on each side. If the stack of paper were the size of a house, the visible universe would be the size of a small marble. Can't be stuffed into the universe, indeed.
@@kishaloyb.7937 Unless, perhaps, that knowledge is incomplete. We only have "known" largest prime numbers. There are msot certainly larger. Our friend here is very outdated already.
Ok, so, mindblown. Thanks. But still been trying to wrap my head around this for about two days now. So I opened an excel sheet and typed the number one. Then below it typed =A1*2 and dragged that formula to repeat itself to see how far it would go. After just the hundred trillions, excel gets lazy and just adds zeros to the back of the numbers and that's just 1*10^15. After 1*10^145 the numbers didn't fit on the screen and after 9*10^307 it just reads error. So I tried Word. typed a page of zeros at 8 pt font then copied and pasted it. Did that for 10 pages then copied and pasted that till 100 pages etc etc. After 20,000 pages I only have 150,000,000 zeros an that's just 1.5*10^8 and the computer takes almost two minutes to load a new paste.I love that I can put in a simple math idea and crash my computer.
"What do you do for a living?" "I work with Carl Sagan." "That must be cool." "He gave me a roll of paper and told me to write a googolplex on it." "Seriously?" "Yup. Worst. Boss. Ever."
Cosmos, even if it is a few decades old, should be seen by all. What a wonderful series that provokes thought and logic. Carl Sagan was a great person influencing countless people. Much respect to him and those that follow in his footsteps like Neil Tyson Degrasse... wish our media would promote this stuff more instead of ignorance.
I’ve used this example (what is, and how large is a Googolplex) as a “nugget of thought” when teaching engineering courses. It never fails to blow a few minds in the classroom. Inevitably there is a student who smugly doubts the immensity of a Googolplex, and who promises to “come back tomorrow” with a better, more suitable way to write it down. They return for the next class and sheepishly admit they laid awake more than once trying to picture this number in their head only to gradually realize they are dealing with an incredible size that cannot be dealt with outside of the way/method DR Sagan provides.
Couuld it be the same thing with lightspeed? As Carl Sagan explained in earlier episodes, you can only approach the speed of light, but you can never get there (as far as we know now). Maybe those are just the boundaries nature has set for us.
Infinity is essentially 1 followed by INFINITE (Endless and without bound) number of zeros - meaning its theorectically impossible to out write out the number INFINITY. INFINITY is therefore symbolized by the sideward looking 8.
When I was a kid in the 80’s, my father would sit me down to watch Sagan on PBS. We saw this specific episode on its original broadcast. The next school day I told my friends mom I had learned the word “googol,” and she told me to “Stop using baby talk.” It’s my dad’s favorite story about my youth and education.
What's larger: a Googolplex or Graham's Number? My mind is too small to even consider the notion of thinking of dreaming about coming up with an idea of a method to develop a way of thinking about pondering the conception of a thought to start deciphering a way to even begin considering calculating the first few digits of either of these numbers.
FYI that number would be much more than 100,000 zeros following the 1. 100,000 zeros is 10^5^1 which is much less than even 10^10^1, much less 10^10^10.
The most compelling response to the futility of writing out a googolplex would be to say, "Well why not make the zeros really small or write on incredibly thin paper".....until you do the math. The known Universe is ~ 10^78 m3. If we were to divide it up into a googol boxes, a box for each zero, then each box would be ~ 10^-22m3. That's roughly the size of a hydrogen atom. Put another way you could just about cram a googol H atoms into the known universe with no spaces in between.
How can you say any number larger than one is the exact same distance from infinity? Like he said even though a googol plex is large 1 is exactly the same distance from infinity. It is exactly 1 googol plex -1 closer. But infinity isn't any closer. hey! I just answered my own question but it is still a paradox.
Why would you want to make a number like the googolplex? What is the use of it? If the number of elementary particles in the universe is "only" 10^80, why would you make a number as big as 10^10^100?
Does MS Word have some kind of internal compression algorithm? It seems to me that to write it in a text file, it'd require a googol bytes, which is a substantially larger amount of storage.
Evolutionary Theory fully rejects the concept of irreducible complexity, whereas ID is dependent on it. There's your paradox. How do you reconcile acceptance of both?
@kaneda956 A duotrigintillion is the name given to 10^99 - so using the same common system, 10^100 is equal to ten duotrigintillion. A "googol" is just a simpler, more commonly used name for this same number
Need some help here, I'm not sure I understand this correctly. If I would write down a googol and then exchange every zero with a googol, would that be a googolplex? Complex stuff, that's for sure.
when your dead, your dead, you are exactly like everything and everyone around you. without the little particles and atoms in your head to know what was going on,you would be like you were before you were born,unable to think, unable to know, unable to do anything. we are equal to this universe, we are nothing special.we are like the plants, the animals, and the planets. we are just parts of this amazing and beautiful universe. and we are able to have the gift to know how it works. -Carl Sagan
@takkie23 The time it would take to write such a number also renders the task implausible: if a person can write two digits per second, it would take around about 1.51 × 1092 years, which is 1.1 × 1082 times the age of the universe, to write a googolplex.
I wonder what went into making the googolplex scene at Cambridge University in England. I got a kick out of seeing that long roll of paper draped over the parked bicycles and watching someone pushing a payload of something stepping over that paper. I'm guessing that this scene was filmed during a break, because I just cannot imagine the logistics that would be required to do this when classes or exams are going on.
Grahams number is equally as close to infinite as a Googolplex as 1 as well. I think its amazing though that Grahams number ends with a 7, so no matter how much time it would take to write it, you would eventually in a seemingly incredibly long time finish writing it. But in the time it would take you to write that, you could write it again a Grahams number amount of times and still at that point be as close to infinite as Grahams number, Googolplex and indeed.... ONE.
@drmoroe30 "Grahams Number" drawfs a Googolplex and it has been used in a practical mathematical calculation.. though im not sure what it calculates. Noone knows the full value of Grahams Number... only the last few thousand digits (not the first digits)
_A number one followed by one hundred zeroes is known by what name?_ is the question that won Charles Ingram a one followed by six zeroes (in pound sterling), after a great deal of prevaricating. I knew the answer instantly, having watched _Cosmos_ some twenty years previously. Of course it didn't do him much good, as he soon had it taken away from him.
Im surprise no one has typed on out yet. would take a while but it can actually be done, unless for some ungodly reason the file size would be way too big lol
Dr. Sagan had a sense of humor, didn't he? Such a genius. I would have loved to been in his class he taught at Cambridge University in ithica, New York. I understand that his classes had wait lists after his show aired! Would'nt that have been cool to have had Carl for a teacher!? Great things he tried to teach us!
@vskynet This question is difficult to understand. Are you asking if zero equals other numbers? No. Your mistake seems to be that you think you can somehow "divide" a digit of a larger number of existence as if it were a multiplication. You can't. 10 does not equal 1 times 0, it equals ten.
...if we assume that there are another 250b galaxies (so, 500 billion galaxies in total, as some German scientists' supercomputer concluded recently), then that number only changes to 4.374 * 10^84 atoms. Assuming there are 300 particles in an atom, then you have ~1.31 * 10^87 particles in the Universe. Very approximate obviously, as there's no constant number of particles per atom, plus 500b galaxies isn't a confirmed number, and I assumed that all galaxies are the same size as the Milky Way...
Exponentiation is notably not associative, 10^10^100 can have two radically different meanings. (10^10)^100=10^1000, which would be 1 followed by a thousand zeros. But a googolplex is 10^(10^100).
ok i dont get it why the hell does mighty number say the number is called ten duotrigintillion and not googol?? i typed in 1 followed by 100 zeroes??? :(
@Flopieto Because infinity goes on forever.....there is even a number called a Flopieto. And even a OOBilly. Both make a googlplex seem like the amount of interest Banks pay customers.
@lzoli18B It was a joke - he said "we STARTED to write it". Remember a googol is MANY times greater than the number of elementary particles in the known universe, and a googolplex is 10 to the POWER of that many. So it's 1 followed by more zeroes than there are particles in the known universe.
"a piece of paper large enough to contain all the zeroes in a googolplex couldn't be stuffed into the known universe" I don't get it. Isn't that what he exactly did on the rolling paper? or was he short a few billion zeroes?
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
"Fortunately, there's a simpler, more precise way of writing a Googolplex."
Guy who wrote Googolplex on paper roll: "GODDAMMIT!"
Salacious T Hahahahahaha
well.. he didn't exactly write googolplex on that paper.. faaaar from it lol
🤣🤣
@@JohanLGT its sarcasm
I like the elegant way Carl links his zeroes with a top line.
It's really cool how he draws his zeros connected - sweet math handwriting
"A googolplex is as precisely as far from infinity as is the number one." Mindblown.
lol i like ur profile i actually tried to swat the screen
Look up Graham's number and have your mind REALLY blown.
Graham's number is as precisely as far from infinity as is the number one :)
and half of infinity is still infinity. You divide it by any number, or subtract any number from it and its size does not shrink.
And if you consider that there is an infinite number of whole numbers, between each of those infinite whole numbers, there is an infinite number of fractions...
Carl still dropping knowledge. Thank you!!
Because it sticks in my head the most, I believe that this was the first episode of Cosmos I watched back in '80.
It also introduced me to classical music. The Haydn Trumpet Concerto remains my favorite piece.
Thanks, Dr. Sagan!
You keep believing, I'll keep evolving! awesome quote
Genius. I need to buy this series on DVD. I've forgotten how much pure intellectual gold is in it. Thanks asantos for the upload. I was laughing all the way through. Carl = legend x 10 ^ Googplex.
It’s on Amazon for $35 🤘
RIP Carl Sagan. As a young person at the time, I found his series, Cosmos,to be thoroughly enthralling. It ignited in me an insatiable desire to learn about Science. He was a superlative teacher and one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century. A true genius.
Challenge accepted:
A little while ago, I printed out the largest prime number (because I'm a big nerd) on standard 8.5x11 paper at 3-point font, with half-inch margins. Tiny, but still large enough to read by the naked eye (and large enough for the printer to print legibly). It took about 175 pages, front and back. The largest prime is 22,338,618 digits long, giving 22,338,618 digits / 175 pages.
22,338,618 is 10^7.35, which means I need 10^92.65 times as many pages as before to print a googleplex. 175 pages x 10^92.65 is 10^94.89 pages. A single page is about 30 mm^3 in volume. Thus, this would require a volume of 30 mm^3 / page * 10^94.89 pages is 10^96.37 mm^3 total. One light-year is 9.46 x 10^18 mm, so that equates out to volume of 2.77 x 10^39 ly^3, which is a cube 140 TRILLION light-years on each side.
If the stack of paper were the size of a house, the visible universe would be the size of a small marble. Can't be stuffed into the universe, indeed.
Thanks for your diligence but I'm guessing you don't have a girlfriend. Lol
@@jafmoveez2446 yeah, i also think so
@@jafmoveez2446 girlfriend is temporary, knowledge is eternal xD
This, this is an important comment
@@kishaloyb.7937 Unless, perhaps, that knowledge is incomplete. We only have "known" largest prime numbers. There are msot certainly larger. Our friend here is very outdated already.
Ok, so, mindblown. Thanks. But still been trying to wrap my head around this for about two days now. So I opened an excel sheet and typed the number one. Then below it typed =A1*2 and dragged that formula to repeat itself to see how far it would go. After just the hundred trillions, excel gets lazy and just adds zeros to the back of the numbers and that's just 1*10^15. After 1*10^145 the numbers didn't fit on the screen and after 9*10^307 it just reads error. So I tried Word. typed a page of zeros at 8 pt font then copied and pasted it. Did that for 10 pages then copied and pasted that till 100 pages etc etc. After 20,000 pages I only have 150,000,000 zeros an that's just 1.5*10^8 and the computer takes almost two minutes to load a new paste.I love that I can put in a simple math idea and crash my computer.
you are amazing :)
I've always found Sagan's statement "A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1" to be a very profound statement.
"What do you do for a living?"
"I work with Carl Sagan."
"That must be cool."
"He gave me a roll of paper and told me to write a googolplex on it."
"Seriously?"
"Yup. Worst. Boss. Ever."
@Spartank43x because he wasnt alluding to the googol with that, but the googolplex.
Cosmos, even if it is a few decades old, should be seen by all. What a wonderful series that provokes thought and logic. Carl Sagan was a great person influencing countless people. Much respect to him and those that follow in his footsteps like Neil Tyson Degrasse... wish our media would promote this stuff more instead of ignorance.
This dude took: "Oh you like math? Then name every number." To the next fucking level
"Googol PLEXSSS"
I’ve used this example (what is, and how large is a Googolplex) as a “nugget of thought” when teaching engineering courses. It never fails to blow a few minds in the classroom. Inevitably there is a student who smugly doubts the immensity of a Googolplex, and who promises to “come back tomorrow” with a better, more suitable way to write it down. They return for the next class and sheepishly admit they laid awake more than once trying to picture this number in their head only to gradually realize they are dealing with an incredible size that cannot be dealt with outside of the way/method DR Sagan provides.
I recall this episode originally airing. The brain remembers when we learn strange words like Googolplex!
In case anyone was wondering (i know i was) the music is Haydn's trumpet concerto E flat 3rd mov
Couuld it be the same thing with lightspeed? As Carl Sagan explained in earlier episodes, you can only approach the speed of light, but you can never get there (as far as we know now). Maybe those are just the boundaries nature has set for us.
Everything this man says inspires me.
If you are reading this comment how are you now
Infinity is essentially 1 followed by INFINITE (Endless and without bound) number of zeros - meaning its theorectically impossible to out write out the number INFINITY. INFINITY is therefore symbolized by the sideward looking 8.
An all-seasons classic
Loved his work
I love how he says googol the first time. I watched "Cosmos" when I was a teenager. Brilliant man!
The Sagan version or the Tyson version?
That explanation of Graham's number's size doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of it!
When I was a kid in the 80’s, my father would sit me down to watch Sagan on PBS. We saw this specific episode on its original broadcast. The next school day I told my friends mom I had learned the word “googol,” and she told me to “Stop using baby talk.” It’s my dad’s favorite story about my youth and education.
Whenever Sagan's eyes meet the camera in this, or any other video, I feel supremely inadequate.
Such a monument to modern science.
RIP
Infinity gives us an endless source of amazement LOL.
What's larger: a Googolplex or Graham's Number? My mind is too small to even consider the notion of thinking of dreaming about coming up with an idea of a method to develop a way of thinking about pondering the conception of a thought to start deciphering a way to even begin considering calculating the first few digits of either of these numbers.
googol > google
Google play
@@brawlstarsyt7981 Google Music no longer exists.
I remember watching this episode as a kid, it really got stuck in my head.
FYI that number would be much more than 100,000 zeros following the 1. 100,000 zeros is 10^5^1 which is much less than even 10^10^1, much less 10^10^10.
i love the way he writes his zeros.
The most compelling response to the futility of writing out a googolplex would be to say, "Well why not make the zeros really small or write on incredibly thin paper".....until you do the math. The known Universe is ~ 10^78 m3. If we were to divide it up into a googol boxes, a box for each zero, then each box would be ~ 10^-22m3. That's roughly the size of a hydrogen atom. Put another way you could just about cram a googol H atoms into the known universe with no spaces in between.
could you write out the zeroes please?
If Graham's Number is so long then how is anyone supposed to ring him?
Absolutely, it's very baffling but I'd love to find out some of this stuff.
How can you say any number larger than one is the exact same distance from infinity?
Like he said even though a googol plex is large 1 is exactly the same distance from infinity.
It is exactly 1 googol plex -1 closer. But infinity isn't any closer.
hey! I just answered my own question but it is still a paradox.
I could listen to Carl Sagan's voice forever. Don't even care what he is saying. Well, I prefer he speak about science, but I'd take whatever!
Why would you want to make a number like the googolplex? What is the use of it? If the number of elementary particles in the universe is "only" 10^80, why would you make a number as big as 10^10^100?
Is that Cambridge (UK) where he tries to unfurl the roll of paper?
Does MS Word have some kind of internal compression algorithm? It seems to me that to write it in a text file, it'd require a googol bytes, which is a substantially larger amount of storage.
So then what was the point of the googel number? Was he actually using it for anything?
Evolutionary Theory fully rejects the concept of irreducible complexity, whereas ID is dependent on it.
There's your paradox. How do you reconcile acceptance of both?
So it's 1 with how many zeros after the first digit ???
Is a Googolplex a 1 followed by a 1 and a 100 zeroes?
@teejayandjon i know right.. i was wondering who put those zeros on the paper. you know sagan didnt do it.
How do we know how many elementary particles are in the entire universe?
"The total number of elementary particles ... in the accessable universe is of the order of 10^80." I'd love to see the calculations on that one.
anyone recognize where this was shot at?
I like how he wrote his zeros.
@TensorKhan Just think, the number of zeros written would exceed the number of elementary particles in the universe by a factor of a googol minus 80.
Are those BloodAngels on the table in front of Carl when he writes the googleplex?
@kaneda956 A duotrigintillion is the name given to 10^99 - so using the same common system, 10^100 is equal to ten duotrigintillion. A "googol" is just a simpler, more commonly used name for this same number
I Tried in MS Word to get a Googolplex using copy and paste, but I only got around 30,500,000 zeros.
Need some help here, I'm not sure I understand this correctly. If I would write down a googol and then exchange every zero with a googol, would that be a googolplex?
Complex stuff, that's for sure.
Even though googolplexian is longer?
when your dead, your dead, you are exactly like everything and everyone around you. without the little particles and atoms in your head to know what was going on,you would be like you were before you were born,unable to think, unable to know, unable to do anything. we are equal to this universe, we are nothing special.we are like the plants, the animals, and the planets. we are just parts of this amazing and beautiful universe. and we are able to have the gift to know how it works. -Carl Sagan
You have earned my subscription for knowing about elocution, not a word commonly used in the smoko room at my place of work : )
@takkie23 The time it would take to write such a number also renders the task implausible: if a person can write two digits per second, it would take around about 1.51 × 1092 years, which is 1.1 × 1082 times the age of the universe, to write a googolplex.
I wonder what went into making the googolplex scene at Cambridge University in England. I got a kick out of seeing that long roll of paper draped over the parked bicycles and watching someone pushing a payload of something stepping over that paper.
I'm guessing that this scene was filmed during a break, because I just cannot imagine the logistics that would be required to do this when classes or exams are going on.
Agent Smith took elocution lessons from CarlSagan.
Grahams number is equally as close to infinite as a Googolplex as 1 as well.
I think its amazing though that Grahams number ends with a 7, so no matter how much time it would take to write it, you would eventually in a seemingly incredibly long time finish writing it.
But in the time it would take you to write that, you could write it again a Grahams number amount of times and still at that point be as close to infinite as Grahams number, Googolplex and indeed.... ONE.
whats a googolplex to the power of googolplex?
in school this might bore me, with sagan its a great journey to knowledge
I love how this guy speaks.
Does anyone know which university he is at in this video?
Carl always makes me learn new things, man
His marker is so inky....i love it.
@drmoroe30 "Grahams Number" drawfs a Googolplex and it has been used in a practical mathematical calculation.. though im not sure what it calculates. Noone knows the full value of Grahams Number... only the last few thousand digits (not the first digits)
I am sure I read or saw on another UA-cam channel that a larger number was something like Aleph Null? If i said that word correctly.
_A number one followed by one hundred zeroes is known by what name?_ is the question that won Charles Ingram a one followed by six zeroes (in pound sterling), after a great deal of prevaricating.
I knew the answer instantly, having watched _Cosmos_ some twenty years previously.
Of course it didn't do him much good, as he soon had it taken away from him.
Im surprise no one has typed on out yet. would take a while but it can actually be done, unless for some ungodly reason the file size would be way too big lol
Why even have a number that is way larger than everything in the universe? When would one even use a number that large in practical calculations?
I clicked on this video only to hear Carl Sagan say "GOOGOL"
Dr. Sagan had a sense of humor, didn't he? Such a genius. I would have loved to been in his class he taught at Cambridge University in ithica, New York. I understand that his classes had wait lists after his show aired! Would'nt that have been cool to have had Carl for a teacher!? Great things he tried to teach us!
That's Cornell University in Ithaca NY. Cambridge is in the UK.
What about infinity?
@vskynet This question is difficult to understand.
Are you asking if zero equals other numbers? No.
Your mistake seems to be that you think you can somehow "divide" a digit of a larger number of existence as if it were a multiplication.
You can't.
10 does not equal 1 times 0, it equals ten.
The video cut out suddenly because the guy they got to write out the googolplex ran in and punched Sagan.
It's not a real number but it's still a number. And if you don't like infinity, what about Graham's Number?
Well I'm assuming if someone asks you what the largest number you know is they expect an answer where you can actually specify the number.
You misunderstand
@crocfme no he said that the number of atoms in the known universe was 10 to the 80th power... less than a Googol and by far less than a googolplex...
...if we assume that there are another 250b galaxies (so, 500 billion galaxies in total, as some German scientists' supercomputer concluded recently), then that number only changes to 4.374 * 10^84 atoms. Assuming there are 300 particles in an atom, then you have ~1.31 * 10^87 particles in the Universe.
Very approximate obviously, as there's no constant number of particles per atom, plus 500b galaxies isn't a confirmed number, and I assumed that all galaxies are the same size as the Milky Way...
The Googlexplex article on Wikipedia has a fairly good demonstration of that.
what a fancy way to write zeroes! :)
How come a Googol Plex is 10^10^100 and NOT 10^100^100 ???
Exponentiation is notably not associative, 10^10^100 can have two radically different meanings. (10^10)^100=10^1000, which would be 1 followed by a thousand zeros. But a googolplex is 10^(10^100).
Faultered in the end; 10^10^100 is not a googolplex, it is merely 10000000000^100. He should have used parentheses around the last numbers.
How about grahams number
@Zarrykotter I mean 2^GOOGOL not 2^googolplex that has too many digits... LOL
ok i dont get it why the hell does mighty number say the number is called ten duotrigintillion and not googol?? i typed in 1 followed by 100 zeroes??? :(
Music at 2:06?
Haydn - Trumpet Concerto In E Flat
Neste site existe uma lista quase completa das músicas da série Cosmos: cosmic_voyager.tripod.com/cosmosindex.htm
@Flopieto
Because infinity goes on forever.....there is even a number called a Flopieto. And even a OOBilly. Both make a googlplex seem like the amount of interest Banks pay customers.
@lzoli18B
It was a joke - he said "we STARTED to write it". Remember a googol is MANY times greater than the number of elementary particles in the known universe, and a googolplex is 10 to the POWER of that many. So it's 1 followed by more zeroes than there are particles in the known universe.
the googlolplex is unthinkable
@quiz0walkthroughs, he didn't actually write a googolplex on that paper
Reminded of this video after watching Squid Game.
"a piece of paper large enough to contain all the zeroes in a googolplex couldn't be stuffed into the known universe"
I don't get it. Isn't that what he exactly did on the rolling paper? or was he short a few billion zeroes?
Lol billion