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A 'googol' is the large number 10¹⁰⁰, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (in decimal representation).
The term was coined in 1920 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta (1911–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book ''Mathematics and the Imagination'' (1940).
A googol is of the same order of magnitude as the factorial of 70 (70! being approximately 1.198 googol, or 10 to the power 100.0784), and its only prime factors are 2 and 5 (100 of each). In binary it would take up 333 bits.
The googol is of no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other incredibly large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.
Google, the Internet search engine, was named after this number. Larry Page, one of the founders, was fascinated with mathematics and Googol, even during high school. They ended up with "Google" due to a spelling mistake.^[1][2]
The word "google" or "googol," regardless of spelling, suggests the wide-eyed look of a baby, and the comic strip character Barney Google who began appearing in the 1910s.
A 'googol' can be written in conventional notation as follows:
:1 googol
:= 10¹⁰⁰
:= 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Its official English number name is 'ten duotrigintillion' on the short scale, 'ten thousand sexdecillion' on the long scale, or 'ten sexdecilliard' on the Peletier long scale.

Contents

Googolplex

Googol and comparable large numbers

Miscellaneous

See also

References

External links

Googolplex

A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeroes, or ten raised to the power of a googol:
:10^googol = 10¹⁰¹⁰⁰.
In the documentary , physicist and broadcast personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in numerals (i.e., "1,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than the known universe occupies, and that over 9000 googolplexes (as suggested to do by the book ) would be absolutely impossible without extrauniversal energy to matter conversion.

Googol and comparable large numbers

★ A googol is greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which has been variously estimated from 10⁷⁹ up to 10⁸¹,^[3][4].

★ A ''little googol'' is 2¹⁰⁰ (about 1.268x10³⁰), or 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376, while a ''little googolplex'' is $2^\{2^\{100\}\}$ or about $10^\{3.8\; imes\; 10^\{29\}\}$.

★ Avogadro's number, 6.0221415x10²³, can loosely be thought of as the number of carbon atoms in twelve grams of elemental carbon, and is perhaps the most widely known large number from chemistry and physics. Avogadro's number is much less than a googol.

★ Black holes are presumed to evaporate because they faintly give off Hawking radiation; if so, a supermassive black hole would take ''about'' a googol years to evaporate.^[5]

★ Seventy factorial, or 70!, is just over a googol, 1.19785717 × 10¹⁰⁰. This means that there are over a googol ways to arrange seventy items (or people) in a sequence (such as a line to a concert).

★ The Shannon number, 10¹²⁰, a rough lower bound on the number of possible chess games, is more than a googol.

★ A googol is considerably less than the number described in the ancient Greek story of The Sand Reckoner, namely $10^\{8\; imes\; 10^\{16\}\}$.

Miscellaneous

★ ''Googol'' was the answer to the million-pound question on ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' when Major Charles Ingram allegedly attempted to defraud the quiz show on 10 September 2001.

★ In the January 23, 1963 ''Peanuts'' strip, Lucy asks Schroeder what the chances are of them getting married, and Schroeder responds "Oh, I'd say about 'googol' to one."

★ In an episode of the animated series '', the "Gaminator" video games system is said to have a "3 googolhertz processor."

★ "A googol is precisely as far from infinity as is the number one." — Carl Sagan, ''

See also

★ Large numbers

★ Names of large numbers

References

1. Koller, David. "Origin of the name, "Google." ''Stanford University.'' January, 2004.
2. Hanley, Rachael. "From Googol to Google: Co-founder returns." ''The Stanford Daily.'' February 12, 2003. Retrieved on July 14, 2006.
3. Estimate of the number of particles in the Universe; 10⁷⁹ up to 10⁸¹
4. Another estimate of the number of particles in the Universe; 4x10⁷⁹
5. On the dark side, p.4

External links

★ History from the Google website

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★ "Tridecabillion" by Paul Niquette