What’s A Google ?
When you hear the word Google the first image that comes to mind has to bethe famous internet search engine but does the word actually mean anything ?Well the answer is a firm yes because it comes from the term “Googol” whichrepresents a number (written as a 1 followed by 100 zeros) so large that it’sactually larger than the total number of atoms in the known universe.
As you might imagine the number is rarely used except maybe in theoreticaland computational calculations, however the big question is whether a numberbigger than a Googol exists ? Well funnily enough there is and it’s called agoogolplex which would be a number 1 followed by, wait for it not one thousandzeros, not even one million zeros but a googol zeroes.
Getting confused ? Well you should be because this number is so large thatit’s almost impossible to imagine and also impossible to write because doing sowould require more space than the known universe provides. Absolutely mindboggling don’t you think!
Lastly for those of you that are interested in where this term actually camefrom, well it was popularized in the 1940′s by the american mathematicianEdward Kasner who created it as a useful number when comparing unimaginablylarge numbers with infinity. Oh and the actual term “googol” was coined by histhen 9 year old nephew Milton Sirotta, not bad for a 9 year old!