10 to 3003 power
The debate about what is the largest figure in the world is ongoing. Different systems of calculus offer different options and people do not know what to believe, and which number is considered the largest.
Scientists have been interested in this question since the days of the Roman Empire. The biggest catch lies in the definition of what a "number" is and what a "digit" is. At one time, people for a long time considered the decillion as the largest number, that is, 10 to the 33rd degree. But, after scientists began to actively study the American and English metric systems, it was discovered that the largest number in the world is 10 to the 3003 power - a million million. People in everyday life believe that the biggest figure is trillion. Moreover, this is quite formal, since after a trillion, names are simply not given, because the count is too complicated. However, purely theoretically, the number of zeros can be added indefinitely. Therefore, it is almost impossible to imagine even a purely visual trillion and what follows it.
In Roman numerals
On the other hand, the definition of "numbers" in the understanding of mathematicians is a little different. A number means a sign that is accepted everywhere and is used to indicate a quantity expressed in numerical equivalent. The second concept "number" means the expression of quantitative characteristics in a convenient form through the use of numbers. From this it follows that numbers are made up of numbers. It is also important that the figure has symbolic properties. They are conditioned, recognizable, unchangeable. Numbers also have sign properties, but they follow from the fact that numbers are made up of digits. From this we can conclude that a trillion is not a figure at all, but a number. Then what is the biggest figure in the world if it's not a trillion, which is a number?
The important thing is that numbers are used as constituents of numbers, but not only that. The number, however, is the same number if we are talking about some things, counting them from zero to nine. Such a system of signs applies not only to the familiar Arabic numerals, but also to the Roman numerals I, V, X, L, C, D, M. These are Roman numerals. On the other hand, V I I I is a Roman number. In Arabic terms, it corresponds to the number eight.
In Arabic numerals
Thus, it turns out that the numbers are counted units from zero to nine, and the rest are numbers. Hence the conclusion that the largest figure in the world is nine. 9 is a sign, and a number is a simple quantitative abstraction. Trillion is a number, and in no way a figure, and therefore cannot be the largest figure in the world. The largest number in the world can be called a trillion, and that is purely nominal, since the numbers can be counted ad infinitum. The number of digits is strictly limited - from 0 to 9.
It should also be remembered that the numbers and numbers of different systems of calculation do not coincide, as we saw from the examples with Arabic and Roman numbers and numbers. This is because numbers and numbers are simple concepts that a person himself invents. Therefore, the number of one system of calculation can easily be the number of another, and vice versa.
Thus, the largest number is uncountable, because it can continue to be added ad infinitum from numbers. As for the numbers themselves, in the generally accepted system, the largest figure is 9.
As a child, I was tormented by the question of what is the largest number, and I tormented almost everyone with this stupid question. Having learned the number one million, I asked if there was a number more than a million. Billion? And more than a billion? Trillion? More than a trillion? Finally, there was someone clever who explained to me that the question is stupid, since it is enough to just add one to the largest number, and it turns out that it was never the largest, since there are even more numbers.
And now, many years later, I decided to ask another question, namely: what is the largest number that has its own name? Fortunately, now there is an Internet and they can be puzzled by patient search engines that will not call my questions idiotic ;-). Actually, this is what I did, and this is what I found out as a result.
| Number | Latin name | Russian prefix |
| 1 | unus | an- |
| 2 | duo | duo- |
| 3 | tres | three- |
| 4 | quattuor | quadri- |
| 5 | quinque | quinti- |
| 6 | sex | sex- |
| 7 | septem | septi- |
| 8 | octo | oct- |
| 9 | novem | non- |
| 10 | decem | deci- |
There are two systems for naming numbers - American and English.
The American system is pretty simple. All the names of large numbers are constructed as follows: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and at the end the suffix-million is added to it. An exception is the name "million" which is the name of the number one thousand (lat. mille) and the increasing suffix-million (see table). This is how the numbers are obtained - trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion. The American system is used in the USA, Canada, France and Russia. You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the American system using the simple formula 3 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral).
The English naming system is the most common in the world. It is used, for example, in Great Britain and Spain, as well as in most of the former English and Spanish colonies. The names of numbers in this system are built like this: so: the suffix-million is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is built according to the principle - the same Latin numeral, but the suffix is -billion. That is, after a trillion in the English system, there is a trillion, and only then a quadrillion, followed by a quadrillion, etc. Thus, a quadrillion in the English and American systems are completely different numbers! You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the English system and ending with the suffix-million by the formula 6 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral) and by the formula 6 x + 6 for numbers ending in -billion.
Only the number billion (10 9) passed from the English system to the Russian language, which would still be more correct to call it as the Americans call it - a billion, since it is the American system that has been adopted in our country. But who in our country does something according to the rules! ;-) By the way, sometimes the word trillion is also used in Russian (you can see for yourself by running a search in Google or Yandex) and it means, apparently, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.
In addition to numbers written using Latin prefixes according to the American or English system, so-called off-system numbers are also known, i.e. numbers that have their own names without any Latin prefixes. There are several such numbers, but I will talk about them in more detail a little later.
Let's go back to writing using Latin numerals. It would seem that they can write numbers to infinity, but this is not entirely true. Let me explain why. Let's first see how the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:
| Name | Number |
| Unit | 10 0 |
| Ten | 10 1 |
| One hundred | 10 2 |
| One thousand | 10 3 |
| Million | 10 6 |
| Billion | 10 9 |
| Trillion | 10 12 |
| Quadrillion | 10 15 |
| Quintillion | 10 18 |
| Sextillion | 10 21 |
| Septillion | 10 24 |
| Octillion | 10 27 |
| Quintillion | 10 30 |
| Decillion | 10 33 |
And so, now the question arises, what's next. What's behind the decillion? In principle, of course, it is possible, of course, by combining prefixes to generate such monsters as: andecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion, but these will already be compound names, but we were interested in numbers. Therefore, according to this system, in addition to the above, you can still get only three proper names - vigintillion (from lat. viginti- twenty), centillion (from lat. centum- one hundred) and a million (from lat. mille- one thousand). The Romans did not have more than a thousand of their own names for numbers (all numbers over a thousand were composite). For example, the Romans called a million (1,000,000) decies centena milia, that is, "ten hundred thousand". And now, in fact, the table:
Thus, according to such a system, the number is greater than 10 3003, which would have its own, non-compound name, it is impossible to get! But nevertheless, numbers more than a million million are known - these are the very off-system numbers. Let's finally tell you about them.
| Name | Number |
| Myriad | 10 4 |
| Googol | 10 100 |
| Asankheya | 10 140 |
| Googolplex | 10 10 100 |
| Second Skewes number | 10 10 10 1000 |
| Mega | 2 (in Moser notation) |
| Megiston | 10 (in Moser notation) |
| Moser | 2 (in Moser notation) |
| Graham's number | G 63 (in Graham notation) |
| Stasplex | G 100 (in Graham notation) |
The smallest such number is myriad(it is even in Dahl's dictionary), which means a hundred hundred, that is, 10,000. This word, however, is outdated and is practically not used, but it is curious that the word "myriad" is widely used, which does not mean a certain number at all, but an uncountable, uncountable set of things. It is believed that the word myriad came into European languages from ancient Egypt.
Googol(from the English googol) is the number ten to the hundredth power, that is, one with one hundred zeros. Googol was first written about in 1938 in the article "New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of Scripta Mathematica by the American mathematician Edward Kasner. According to him, his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling a large number "googol". This number became well-known thanks to the search engine named after him. Google... Note that "Google" is a trademark and googol is a number.
In the famous Buddhist treatise of the Jaina Sutra, dating back to 100 BC, there is a number asankheya(from whale. asenci- uncountable) equal to 10 140. It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles required to attain nirvana.
Googolplex(eng. googolplex) is a number also invented by Kasner with his nephew and means one with a googol of zeros, that is, 10 10 100. This is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner "s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. At the same time that he suggested "googol" he gave a name for a still larger number: "Googolplex." A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.
Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman.
An even larger number than the googolplex, the Skewes "number, was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. Soc. 8 , 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the 79th power, that is, e e e 79. Later, Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x) -Li (x). " Math. Comput. 48 , 323-328, 1987) reduced the Skewes number to e e 27/4, which is approximately 8.185 10 370. It is clear that since the value of Skuse's number depends on the number e, then it is not an integer, so we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to recall other non-natural numbers - pi, e, Avogadro's number, etc.
But it should be noted that there is a second Skuse number, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk 2, which is even greater than the first Skuse number (Sk 1). Second Skewes number, was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote the number up to which the Riemann hypothesis is valid. Sk 2 is equal to 10 10 10 10 3, that is, 10 10 10 1000.
As you understand, the more there are in the number of degrees, the more difficult it is to understand which of the numbers is greater. For example, looking at the Skuse numbers, without special calculations, it is almost impossible to understand which of these two numbers is greater. Thus, it becomes inconvenient to use powers for very large numbers. Moreover, you can think of such numbers (and they have already been invented) when the degrees of degrees simply do not fit on the page. Yes, what a page! They will not fit, even in a book the size of the entire Universe! In this case, the question arises how to write them down. The problem, as you understand, is solvable, and mathematicians have developed several principles for writing such numbers. True, every mathematician who wondered about this problem came up with his own way of writing, which led to the existence of several unrelated ways to write numbers - these are the notations of Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.
Consider the notation of Hugo Steinhaus (H. Steinhaus. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd edn. 1983), which is pretty simple. Stein House proposed to write large numbers inside geometric shapes - a triangle, a square and a circle:
Steinhaus came up with two new super-large numbers. He called the number - Mega and the number is Megiston.
The mathematician Leo Moser refined Stenhouse's notation, which was limited by the fact that if it was required to write numbers much larger than a megiston, difficulties and inconveniences arose, since many circles had to be drawn inside one another. Moser suggested drawing not circles, but pentagons after the squares, then hexagons, and so on. He also proposed a formal notation for these polygons so that numbers could be written down without drawing complex drawings. Moser's notation looks like this:
Thus, according to Moser's notation, the Steinhouse mega is written as 2, and the megiston as 10. In addition, Leo Moser suggested calling a polygon with the number of sides equal to a mega - megaagon. And he proposed the number "2 in Megagon", that is 2. This number became known as the Moser number (Moser "s number) or simply as moser.
But Moser is not the largest number either. The largest number ever used in mathematical proof is a limiting value known as Graham's number(Graham "s number), first used in 1977 to prove one estimate in Ramsey's theory, it is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed without the special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976.
Unfortunately, the number written in Knuth's notation cannot be translated into the Moser system. Therefore, we will have to explain this system as well. In principle, there is nothing complicated about it either. Donald Knuth (yes, yes, this is the same Knuth who wrote "The Art of Programming" and created the TeX editor) invented the concept of superdegree, which he proposed to write down with arrows pointing up:
In general, it looks like this:
I think everything is clear, so let's go back to Graham's number. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:
The number G 63 became known as Graham number(it is often denoted simply as G). This number is the largest known number in the world and is even included in the Guinness Book of Records. Ah, here's that Graham's number is greater than Moser's.
P.S. In order to bring great benefit to all mankind and become famous for centuries, I decided to come up with and name the largest number myself. This number will be called stasplex and it is equal to the number G 100. Memorize it, and when your children ask what is the largest number in the world, tell them that this number is called stasplex.
Update (4.09.2003): Thank you all for the comments. It turned out that I made several mistakes while writing the text. I'll try to fix it now.
- I made several mistakes at once by simply mentioning Avogadro's number. Firstly, several people pointed out to me that in fact 6.022 · 10 23 is the most natural number. And secondly, there is an opinion, and it seems to me correct, that Avogadro's number is not at all a number in the proper, mathematical sense of the word, since it depends on the system of units. Now it is expressed in "mole -1", but if you express it, for example, in moles or something else, it will be expressed in a completely different number, but this will not stop being Avogadro's number at all.
- 10,000 - darkness
100,000 - legion
1,000,000 - leodr
10,000,000 - a raven or a lie
100,000,000 - deck
Interestingly, the ancient Slavs also loved large numbers and knew how to count up to a billion. Moreover, they called such an account "small account". In some manuscripts, the authors also considered the "great score", reaching the number of 10 50. About numbers more than 10 50 it was said: "And the human mind cannot understand more than this." The names used in "small count" were carried over to "great count", but with a different meaning. So, darkness meant no longer 10,000, but a million, a legion meant darkness for those (a million million); leodr - legion of legions (10 to 24 degrees), then it was said - ten leodr, one hundred leodr, ..., and, finally, one hundred thousand leodr legion (10 to 47); leodr leodr (10 in 48) was called a raven and, finally, a deck (10 in 49). - The topic of national names for numbers can be expanded if we recall the forgotten Japanese system of naming numbers, which is very different from the English and American systems (I will not draw hieroglyphs, if someone is interested, they are):
10 0 - ichi
10 1 - jyuu
10 2 - hyaku
10 3 - sen
10 4 - man
10 8 - oku
10 12 - chou
10 16 - kei
10 20 - gai
10 24 - jyo
10 28 - jyou
10 32 - kou
10 36 - kan
10 40 - sei
10 44 - sai
10 48 - goku
10 52 - gougasya
10 56 - asougi
10 60 - nayuta
10 64 - fukashigi
10 68 - muryoutaisuu - Concerning the numbers of Hugo Steinhaus (in Russia, for some reason, his name was translated as Hugo Steinhaus). botev assures that the idea of writing super-large numbers in the form of numbers in circles belongs not to Steinhaus, but to Daniil Kharms, who published this idea for nothing in the article "Raising the Number". I also want to thank Evgeny Sklyarevsky, the author of the most interesting site on entertaining mathematics on the Russian-language Internet - Watermelon, for the information that Steinhaus came up with not only the mega and megiston numbers, but also suggested another number mezzon, equal (in its notation) to "3 in a circle".
- Now about the number myriad or myrioi. There are different opinions about the origin of this number. Some believe that it originated in Egypt, while others believe that it was born only in Ancient Greece. Be that as it may in reality, but the myriad gained fame thanks to the Greeks. Myriad was the name for 10,000, but there were no names for numbers over ten thousand. However, in the note "Psammit" (ie the calculus of sand), Archimedes showed how one can systematically construct and name arbitrarily large numbers. In particular, placing 10,000 (myriad) grains of sand in a poppy seed, he finds that in the Universe (a sphere with a diameter of a myriad of Earth's diameters) no more than 1063 grains of sand would fit (in our notation). It is curious that modern calculations of the number of atoms in the visible Universe lead to the number 10 67 (just a myriad of times more). Archimedes suggested the following names for numbers:
1 myriad = 10 4.
1 d-myriad = myriad of myriads = 10 8.
1 three-myriad = di-myriad of di-myriads = 10 16.
1 tetra-myriad = three-myriad three-myriad = 10 32.
etc.
If there are any comments -
John SommerPlace zeros after any digit or multiply with tens raised to any higher power. It will not seem a little. A lot will show. But the bare tapes are still not very impressive. The piling zeros in the humanities cause not so much surprise as a slight yawn. In any case, to any largest number in the world that you can imagine, you can always add one more ... And the number will come out even more.
And yet, are there words in Russian or any other language for very large numbers? Those that are more than a million, billion, trillion, billion? And in general, how much is a billion?
It turns out that there are two systems for naming numbers. But not Arab, Egyptian, or any other ancient civilizations, but American and English.
In the American system numbers are called like this: the Latin numeral + - illion (suffix) is taken. Thus, the numbers are obtained:
Trillion - 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros)
Quadrillion - 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros)
Quintillion - 1 and 18 zeros
Sextillion - 1 and 21 zero
Septillion - 1 and 24 zeros
octillion - 1 and 27 zeros
Nonillion - 1 and 30 zeros
Decillion - 1 and 33 zeros
The formula is simple: 3 x + 3 (x is a Latin numeral)
In theory, there should also be numbers anilion (unus in Latin - one) and duolion (duo - two), but, in my opinion, such names are not used at all.
English number naming system more widespread.
Here, too, a Latin numeral is taken and the suffix-million is added to it. However, the name of the next number, which is 1000 times larger than the previous one, is formed using the same Latin number and the suffix - illiard. I mean:
Trillion - 1 and 21 zero (in the American system - sextillion!)
Trillion - 1 and 24 zeros (in the American system - septillion)
Quadrillion - 1 and 27 zeros
Quadrillion - 1 and 30 zeros
Quintillion - 1 and 33 zeros
Queenilliard - 1 and 36 zeros
Sextillion - 1 and 39 zeros
Sexbillion - 1 and 42 zeros
The formulas for counting the number of zeros are as follows:
For numbers ending in - illion - 6 x + 3
For numbers ending in - illiard - 6 x + 6
As you can see, confusion is possible. But let's not be afraid!
In Russia, the American system of naming numbers is adopted. From the English system, we borrowed the name of the number "billion" - 1,000,000,000 = 10 9
And where is the "cherished" billion? - Why, a billion is a billion! American style. And we, although we use the American system, took the "billion" from the English one.
Using the Latin names of numbers and the American system, we will call the numbers:
- vigintillion- 1 and 63 zeros
- centillion- 1 and 303 zeros
- million- one and 3003 zeros! Whoa ...
But this, it turns out, is not all. There are also non-systemic numbers.
And the first one is probably myriad- one hundred hundred = 10,000
Googol(it is after him that the famous search engine is named) - one and one hundred zeros
In one of the Buddhist treatises the number asankheya- one and one hundred forty zeros!
Number name googolplex(like googol) was invented by the English mathematician Edward Kasner and his nine-year-old nephew - the unit s - dear mom! - googol zeros !!!
But that's not all ...
The mathematician Skuse named Skuse's number after himself. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the 79th power, that is, e e e 79
And then a great difficulty arose. You can come up with names for numbers. But how to write them down? The number of degrees of degrees of degrees is already such that it simply does not disappear on the page! :)
And then some mathematicians began to write numbers in geometric shapes. And the first, they say, this method of recording was invented by the outstanding writer and thinker Daniil Ivanovich Kharms.
And yet, what is the BIGGEST NUMBER IN THE WORLD? - It is called STASPLEX and is equal to G 100,
where G is the Graham number, the largest ever used in mathematical proof.
This number - a stasplex - was invented by a wonderful person, our compatriot Stas Kozlovsky, to LJ which I am addressing you :) - ctac
Have you ever wondered how many zeros there are in one million? This is a pretty straightforward question. What about a billion or a trillion? One with nine zeros (1,000,000,000) - what is the name of the number?
A short list of numbers and their quantitative designation
- Ten (1 zero).
- One hundred (2 zeros).
- Thousand (3 zeros).
- Ten thousand (4 zeros).
- One hundred thousand (5 zeros).
- Million (6 zeros).
- Billion (9 zeros).
- Trillion (12 zeros).
- Quadrillion (15 zeros).
- Quintillon (18 zeros).
- Sextillion (21 zero).
- Septillon (24 zeros).
- Octalion (27 zeros).
- Nonalion (30 zeros).
- Decalion (33 zeros).
Grouping zeros
1,000,000,000 - what is the name of a number that has 9 zeros? This is a billion. For convenience, it is customary to group large numbers into three sets, separated from each other by a space or punctuation marks such as a comma or period.
This is done to make it easier to read and understand the quantitative value. For example, what is the name of the number 1,000,000,000? In this form, it is worthwhile to pretend a little, to count. And if you write 1,000,000,000, then the task is immediately visually easier, so you need to count not zeros, but triples of zeros.
Numbers with very many zeros
The most popular are Million and Billion (1,000,000,000). What is the name of a number with 100 zeros? This is the googol figure, also called Milton Sirotta. This is a wildly huge amount. Do you think this number is large? Then how about a googolplex, a one followed by a googol of zeros? This figure is so large that it is difficult to come up with a meaning for it. In fact, there is no need for such giants, except to count the number of atoms in an infinite universe.
Is 1 billion a lot?
There are two scales of measurement - short and long. Worldwide in the field of science and finance, 1 billion is 1,000 million. This is on a short scale. According to it, this is a number with 9 zeros.
There is also a long scale that is used in some European countries, including France, and was previously used in the UK (until 1971), where a billion was 1 million million, that is, one and 12 zeros. This gradation is also called the long-term scale. The short scale is now dominant in financial and scientific matters.
Some European languages such as Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, German use a billion (or a billion) names in this system. In Russian, a number with 9 zeros is also described for the short scale of a thousand million, and a trillion is a million million. This avoids unnecessary confusion.
Conversational options
In Russian colloquial speech after the events of 1917 - the Great October Revolution - and the period of hyperinflation in the early 1920s. 1 billion rubles was called "Limard". And in the dashing 1990s, a new slang expression “watermelon” appeared for a billion, a million was called “lemon”.
The word "billion" is now used internationally. This is a natural number, which is represented in decimal system as 10 9 (one and 9 zeros). There is also another name - billion, which is not used in Russia and the CIS countries.
Billion = Billion?
Such a word as billion is used to designate a billion only in those states in which the "short scale" is taken as the basis. These are countries such as the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States, Canada, Greece and Turkey. In other countries, the term billion means the number 10 12, that is, one and 12 zeros. In countries with a "short scale", including Russia, this figure corresponds to 1 trillion.
Such confusion appeared in France at a time when the formation of such a science as algebra was taking place. Initially, the billion had 12 zeros. However, everything changed after the appearance of the main textbook on arithmetic (by Tranchan) in 1558), where a billion is already a number with 9 zeros (one thousand million).
For the next several centuries, these two concepts were used on an equal basis with each other. In the middle of the 20th century, namely in 1948, France switched to a long-scale number system. In this regard, the short scale, once borrowed from the French, is still different from the one they use today.
Historically, the United Kingdom has used the long-term billion, but since 1974 the UK's official statistics have used a short-term scale. Since the 1950s, the short-term scale has been increasingly used in the fields of technical writing and journalism, although the long-term scale still persisted.
The world of science is simply amazing with its knowledge. However, even the most brilliant person in the world will not be able to comprehend them all. But you need to strive for this. That is why in this article I want to figure out what it is, the largest number.
About systems
First of all, it must be said that there are two number naming systems in the world: American and English. Depending on this, the same number can be called differently, although they have the same meaning. And at the very beginning, you need to deal with these particular nuances in order to avoid uncertainty and confusion.
American system
It will be interesting that this system is used not only in America and Canada, but also in Russia. In addition, it also has its own scientific name: the short-scale naming system for numbers. What are large numbers called in this system? So, the secret is pretty simple. At the very beginning, there will be a Latin ordinal number, after which the well-known suffix "-million" will simply be added. The following fact will turn out to be interesting: in translation from the Latin language, the number “million” can be translated as “thousand”. The following numbers belong to the American system: a trillion is 10 12, a quintillion is 10 18, an octillion is 10 27, etc. It will also not be difficult to figure out how many zeros are written in the number. To do this, you need to know a simple formula: 3 * x + 3 (where "x" in the formula is a Latin numeral).
English system
However, despite the simplicity of the American system, the English system is still more widespread in the world, which is a system for naming numbers with a long scale. Since 1948, it has been used in countries such as France, Great Britain, Spain, as well as in countries that were former colonies of England and Spain. The construction of numbers here is also quite simple: the suffix "-million" is added to the Latin designation. Further, if the number is 1000 times larger, the suffix "-billion" is added. How can you find out the number of zeros hidden in the number?
- If the number ends in "-million", you will need the formula 6 * x + 3 ("x" is a Latin numeral).
- If the number ends in "-billion", you will need the formula 6 * x + 6 (where "x", again, is a Latin numeral).
Examples of
At this stage, as an example, you can consider how the same numbers will be called, but on a different scale.
You can easily see that the same name in different systems means different numbers. For example, a trillion. Therefore, considering a number, you still need to first find out according to which system it is written.
Off-system numbers
It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the system numbers, there are also non-systemic numbers. Perhaps the largest number was lost among them? It's worth looking into this.
- Googol. This number is ten to the hundredth power, that is, one followed by one hundred zeros (10 100). This number was first mentioned back in 1938 by the scientist Edward Kasner. A very interesting fact: the world search engine "Google" is named after a rather large number at that time - googol. And the name was invented by Kasner's young nephew.
- Asankheya. This is a very interesting name, which is translated from Sanskrit as "innumerable". Its numerical value is one with 140 zeros - 10 140. The following fact will be interesting: it was known to people as early as 100 BC. e., as evidenced by the entry in the Jaina Sutra, a famous Buddhist treatise. This number was considered special, because it was believed that the same number of cosmic cycles is needed to reach nirvana. Also at that time this number was considered the largest.
- Googolplex. This number was invented by the same Edward Kasner and his aforementioned nephew. Its numerical designation is ten to the tenth power, which, in turn, consists of the hundredth power (that is, ten to the googolplex power). The scientist also said that in this way you can get as large a number as you want: googoltetraplex, googolhexaplex, googletaplex, googoldecaplex, etc.
- Graham's number - G. This is the largest number recognized as such in the near 1980 by the Guinness Book of Records. It is significantly larger than googolplex and its derivatives. And scientists did say that the entire Universe is not able to contain the entire decimal notation of Graham's number.
- Moser's number, Skuse's number. These numbers are also considered one of the largest and they are most often used when solving various hypotheses and theorems. And since these numbers cannot be written down by all generally accepted laws, each scientist does it in his own way.
Latest developments
However, it is still worth saying that there is no limit to perfection. And many scientists believed and still believe that the largest number has not yet been found. And, of course, they will be honored to do this. An American scientist from Missouri worked on this project for a long time, his works were crowned with success. On January 25, 2012, he found the new largest number in the world, which is seventeen million digits (which is the 49th Mersenne number). Note: until that time, the largest number was found by a computer in 2008, it consisted of 12 thousand digits and looked like this: 2 43112609 - 1.
Not the first time
It is worth saying that this has been confirmed by scientific researchers. This number passed three levels of verification by three scientists on different computers, which took a whopping 39 days. However, these are not the first achievements in such a search for an American scientist. He had previously opened the largest numbers. This happened in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, the computer interrupted a series of victories by Curtis Cooper, but in 2012 he regained the palm and the well-deserved title of discoverer.
About the system
How does this all happen, how do scientists find the largest numbers? So, today the computer does most of the work for them. In this case, Cooper used distributed computing. What does it mean? These calculations are carried out by programs installed on computers of Internet users who voluntarily decided to take part in the study. Within the framework of this project, 14 Mersenne numbers were determined, named after the French mathematician (these are prime numbers that are divisible only by themselves and by one). In the form of a formula, it looks like this: M n = 2 n - 1 ("n" in this formula is a natural number).
About bonuses
A logical question may arise: what makes scientists work in this direction? So, this, of course, is the passion and desire to be a pioneer. However, there are also bonuses here: for his brainchild, Curtis Cooper received a cash prize of $ 3,000. But that's not all. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (abbreviation: EFF) encourages such searches and promises to immediately award cash prizes of $ 150,000 and $ 250,000 to those who submit 100 million and billion prime numbers. So there is no doubt that a huge number of scientists around the world are working in this direction today.
Simple conclusions
So what's the biggest number today? At the moment, it was found by an American scientist from the University of Missouri Curtis Cooper, which can be written as follows: 2 57885161 - 1. Moreover, it is also the 48th number of the French mathematician Mersenne. But it is worth saying that there can be no end to this search. And it is not surprising if, after a certain time, scientists will submit to us for consideration the next newly found largest number in the world. There is no doubt that this will happen as soon as possible.
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