"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.

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