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slash real-life floor once upon a time
in YouTube history mr. beast made a
video where he counted all the way from
1 to 100,000 the process took him 40
entire hours to finish which got me
thinking how far could you actually
physically count 2 if you just kept on
going like if you never stopped and just
kept on going on and on and on for an
infinite amount of time where would you
end up at the answers to that question
start simple but the numbers eventually
gets so enormous so colossal that the
math begins to get really really weird
like breaking the universe and reality
itself kind of weird will get to that
point soon but let's start out by diving
into some number counts that we can
actually comprehend first once upon a
time 10 years before mr. beast completed
his count to 100,000 another bored crazy
man had the idea to livestream himself
counting not to 100,000 but to 1 million
his name is Jeremy Harper and in
preparation for the task he was setting
himself he requested off from work
locked himself in his apartment room
turned on his camera and began counting
he would do nothing but count number
after number for 16 hours every day
reserving the remaining 8 hours for
eating and sleeping he was determined to
never leave his apartment until he
reached the mythical number of 1 million
and ordered all of the food that he
needed through delivery services he
soldiered on day after day until finally
after 89 straight days of counting one
number after another in front of a
camera he finally made it to 1 million
and earned the Guinness Book of World
Records achievement for the highest
number ever manually counted to by a
human so if you wanted to beat his
record account up to 1 million and one
prepared to spend at least 89 days
trying to do it now obviously that is
possible to do but how far could you
actually count 2 if you dedicated all of
your time towards it if counting to 1
million it takes around 89 days
and if you kept up that same pace going
on from there and if you began counting
from one at the age of ten then by the
time you hit the age of 79 which happens
to be the average life expectancy in the
United States you would probably end up
hitting somewhere around 283 million and
that is if you did nothing else but
count day after day for 16 hours every
single day
worst of all 283 million doesn't even
really seem like that huge of a number
especially compared to what's coming
next
but in reality that's probably about as
far as a single human being could ever
reach counting to during a lifetime but
numbers obviously get way way bigger
than 283 million in the mad world of
math consider for a moment the
difference between 1 million and 1
billion at first glance when you're just
looking at the numbers they don't really
seem to be that much different but 1
billion is in fact a vastly larger
number than 1 million if you take both
numbers in terms of seconds you would
discover that 1 million seconds is
approximately the same as 12 days that
maybe seems like a decently long time
until you switch over to 1 billion
seconds and discover that's the same as
30 entire years worth of time and
comparing 1 trillion seconds makes even
1 billion look like a puny number
because one trillion seconds is almost
the same as 30 thousand years 1 million
seconds ago was less than 2 weeks ago
1 billion seconds ago was back when the
Soviet Union still existed and 1
trillion seconds ago the Neanderthals
had only recently gone extinct each
increase in the order of magnitude from
1 million to 1 billion and 1 trillion
dramatically increases the scale of the
number that you're talking about and
they just keep getting bigger and bigger
after you hit the trillions you just
keep going up through quadrillion
quintillion septillion and so on and so
on all the way until you eventually
reach a googol which is the same as 10
to the 100th power or a 1 with 100 zeros
written after it which for the record
looks like this Oh Google is an
absolutely enormous number and it's
almost impossible for our human brains
to truly comprehend it to try and put it
into some perspective 10 to the 80th
power is a vastly smaller number than a
Google is but that is already roughly
equal to the number of every single
individual atom that exists in the
entire observable universe to put it all
into even more perspective consider for
a moment the difference in mass between
a single simple electron and the entire
observable universe with around 2
trillion galaxies the mass of the
electron is 10 to the negative 30th
power kilograms while the mass of the
observable universe is 10 to the 60th
power kilograms the difference in mass
between the two is only 10 to the 90th
power which is only the same as zero
point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
one percent of a googol this means that
at the scale of a googol the mass of an
electron and the mass of the entire
universe are effectively identical to
blow your mind even more with just how
big of a number of Google is imagine the
size of the entire observable universe
it's 93 billion light years across
meaning that it takes light 93 billion
entire years just to travel from one
side over to the other it's unbelievably
huge but imagine filling up this entire
space from top to bottom and from
scientist side completely 100 percent
with sand imagine being able to fly at
the speed of light and flying through
nothing but endless sand in every
direction for tens of billions of years
in whatever direction you choose to fly
in it doesn't matter it would all seem
essentially endless to you but now
imagine counting out every single
individual grain of sand in that entire
universe filled to the brim with sand
how long do you think that that might
take you eternity is honestly not a
far-fetched answer but after you've
finally done it and Eve laid to rest
the final grain of sand in the entire
universe sized sandbox you would realize
that in order to actually reach a googol
grains of sand you would have to start
all over again from grain of sand number
one and begin counting again from
scratch and repeat that whole entire
process over again another 100,000 times
only then after you've counted every
single grain of sand in the universe
sized sandbox 100,000 times over again
would you finally arrive at a googol
grains of sand but of course Google is a
puny number when compared with a
googolplex which is simply a Google to
the Google Earth power it was already
basically impossible to imagine how many
grains of sand of Google would actually
be so how can you possibly even begin to
comprehend the size of a googolplex
instead of trying to imagine the size of
the number let's just imagine for a
moment how long it would actually take
to simply write the number out a typical
400 page book can be written with ten to
the sixth zeros inside of it across
every page so if you just continuously
wrote 400 page book after 400 page book
with nothing but zeros in all of them
you would need to write 10 to the 94th
books in order to reach a googolplex
zeros so to put that into perspective if
each book weighed only 100 grams there
literally isn't enough mass in the
entire universe to create that many
books because the mass of all of those
books would be heavier than the mass of
the entire universe so if you're just
writing out zeros on paper it's
physically impossible to write out a
googolplex in full form in our universe
even if you had an infinite amount of
time to do it let alone actually
counting to it the Planck volume is the
smallest size that we currently
understand in physics it's such a small
space in fact that you can fit 100
quintillion Planck volumes inside of
just a proton so if you shrunk your
zeroes all the way down to the size of
the Planck volume how many zeros do you
think you could fit then inside of the
observable universe if the entire
universe was filled from top to bottom
with
Planck volume size zeroes this is the
natural limit of numerical expression
inside of our universe the number of the
smallest units of measurement that we
know of that can fit inside of the
biggest thing that we know of beyond
this it might be literally impossible to
contain any more digits and the answer
is still pathetically small compared
with the size of a googolplex you can
only fit ten to the one hundred and
eighty fifth Planck volumes inside of
the observable universe to truly
appreciate just how gargantuan ly
colossal a googolplex actually is try
imagining an entire universe beyond our
observable universe that the googolplex
meters across in every direction there
are some models of the universe that
estimates the true size of the entire
universe beyond what we can simply
observe to actually be closer in size to
this so if that's true
consider this imagine the volume of
space that you occupy the total number
of possible quantum states or
arrangements of particles that can occur
inside of the space that you take up is
vastly vastly less than a googolplex
what this implies is that if the actual
size of the full universe is actually
closer to a googolplex cubic meters in
volume then shear random probability
almost guarantees that there are going
to be exact identical copies of you
existing somewhere else far away in this
same universe this is because every
possible arrangement of matter inside of
a human-sized space will likely occur
many many times inside of a universe
this big meaning that everything that
could possibly exist would exist and
would exist multiple times meaning
multiple versions of people who are
identical to you meaning multiple
versions who are only slightly different
than you meaning multiple versions of
every single human you've ever known in
your life exact copies of every single
person you've ever known heard of loved
or hated all throughout history would
still exist somewhere out there far away
if the universe actually is this big
there's almost certainly other versions
of you right
doing other things and living their own
lives and some of them might even be
doing something a lot more productive
than what you're doing now like learning
more about math and science on
brilliance
there are even numbers that are far
bigger than a mere Googleplex in the
realm of mathematics that you can learn
all about on brilliance like this entire
section that explains the number that
makes even if Googleplex look tiny
called Graham's number learning new
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