Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 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*

For the observable universe see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

As a lower limit ~3x10^79 hydrogen atoms.

Isaac

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