On 28-Jul-08 23:33, somebody wrote:
> "Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
> news:488e046e$1@news.povray.org...
>> somebody wrote:
>>
>>> Do you really find it easy to visualize the number of subatomic
> particles in
>>> the visible universe? I don't see why thinking about that would be more
>>> informative than, say, 1E80.
>> Well, the number of grains of sand on the entire English coastline is
>> "obviously" a pretty damned big number. And the number of subatomic
>> particles in the universe is equally obviously *very* much larger.
>>
>> Call it a failure of the simplistic human mind, but seeing a handful of
>> symbols on a page isn't very impressive. Likening it to something that
>> at least "feels real" makes it slightly easier to grasp.
>>
>> For example, off the top of your head, how long is "10^14 seconds"?
> 
> It's 10^14 seconds.
> 
>> I mean, is that like, months? Millenia? What?
> 
> 1 year is close to PI*10^7 seconds (something easy to remember), so it's
> close to PI*10^7 years.

<nitpick> that'll be 1/PI*10^7 or (as PI^2 is almost 10) PI*10^6 </nitpick>

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