Occasionally you'll read about something, and the author remarks that 
"this has more than 10^100 possible combinations, which is more than the 
number of atoms in the universe", or something similar.

Of course, 10^80 and 10^90 don't *sound* all that much different. They 
*are* in fact extremely different (specifically, one is a thousand times 
bigger!), but they don't look all that different. Something like 10^496 
is rather difficult to grasp mentally.

Does anybody know of a list anywhere that gives examples of really large 
numbers? I'm thinking of things like the number of grains of sand in a 
cubic meter, the brain cells in a human brain, or the number of 
subatomic particles in the visible universe. I for one have no idea even 
approximately "how big" these numbers are.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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