Largest named number



Many of us might not have heard these terms, as these are not the ones that often occur in our lives. All of us know about large numbers, which are those that exceed a million. Now, these two terms were invented to name the largest numbers.

We're going to address Googol and Googolplex in this article separately so that we have a better idea of what these terms are and how these were invented.

Origin of both the terms

Edward Kasner, an American mathematician, asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta what he would call a number with 100 zeros. He thought it should be named something equally silly as the question itself. He took a little time and then replied "Googol" and further went on to invent "Googolplex", a number that has endless zeros or can be written as 10googol. Therefore, both these terms, Googol and Googolplex, were created by a kid.

Googol

It is a mathematical term used to describe a number that has a hundred zeros after a single digit. It is denoted as 10100 in power since writing a hundred zeros would be quite exhausting. It has no significance in particular but can be used while comparing it with other large numbers.

Edward Kasner popularised this term "Googol" in his book "Mathematics and the Imagination," published in 1940.

Interesting Facts about Googol

  • It is larger than the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe ( that being 1080).
  • The largest and most famous search engine "Google" was named after it because the founders of Google were fascinated with mathematics from their early days.
  • The term was coined by a 9-year-old who thought that only a silly answer could be given to a stupid question when he was asked by his uncle to name a digit with hundred zeros.
  • Googol is also called "ten duotrigintillion" on the short scale, "ten thousand sexdecillion" on the long scale, and "ten sexdecilliard" on the Peletier long scale.

Googolplex

A googolplex is a mathematical number 10googol, or equivalent to . It is written as 1 followed by 10100 zeros; in simple words, it is 1 followed by googol zeros. 

Earlier, its definition differed as it was described as 1 followed by writing zeros until you get tired. He later thought of giving it a more organized and uniform definition since different individuals get tired at different times.

Interesting Facts about Googolplex

  •  It requires 1094 books of standard size (having 400 pages with 50 lines per page) to print all the zeros of a googolplex if 50 zeros are written per line.
  • There are several notations for representing large numbers through which the magnitude of a googolplex could be designated, such as tetration, hyperoperation, Knuth’s up-arrow notation, and a few more.
  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, have named Google’s corporate headquarters as the GooglePlex, a reference to the origin of the company’s name.

Conclusion

Even after having no special significance of Googol and Googolplex in mathematics, they are still an exciting subject to immerse into. It feels fantastic to find terms for numbers that would probably take a lifetime and more to write in a notebook.