How Big is a Big Number?

BIG? HOW BIG World Science Festival IS BY JULIE ROSSMAN AND ROXANNE PALMER MILLION 1,000,000 1 GOOGOL 106 OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE 1 SEPTILL'ION. 1.3 million Earths would fit into the sun BILLION 1,000,000,000 10° 60 05 55 50 10 -45 15 40 20 25 There are 1 billion seconds in roughly 32 years 1 SEXTILLION TRILLION 1,000,000,000,000 1012 1.8 trillion pennies would fit inside the Empire State Building-that's more than the number of pennies ever minted 1 QUINTILLION QUADRILLION 1,000,000,000,000,000 1015 1QUADRILLION INTERSTELLAR SPACE There are somewhere between 1 and 10 quadrillion ants alive on Earth right now QUINTILLION 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 1 TRILLION 1018 A Rubik's Cube can be arranged in ~43.3 quintillion ways-and 43.3 quintillion classic Rubik's cubes would cover the Earth's surface ~275 times 1 BILLION SEXTILLION 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 1021 The Earth weighs around 6.6 sextillion tons 1 MILLION HOW BIG 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 NUMBERS STACK UP SEPTILLION 1024 1 septillion snowflakes are estimated to fall on Canada each year If you stacked up dollar bills on Earth (and didn't lose count), how far up would they reach? GOOGOL 10,000, ...93 ZEROS...,000 10100 One googol (the number that Google is named after) is bigger than the number of atoms in the visible universe but smaller than the total number of possible different chess games GOOGOLPLEX 1... (A GOOGOL OF ZEROS) googol As Cart Sagan so eloquently pút it: "A piece of paper large eņough to contain all the zeros in a googolplex couldn't be stuffed into the known universe.“nas 0000000000000 70000000C 000DB00D00000000000 3000000000 00000000000 EACOO0D0000000000000 SOURCES: Cool Cosmos at IPAC, WolframAlfa, Kokogiak.com, National Wildlife Federation/E.O. Wilson, Berkeley.edu/~converse, Ruwix.com, Cool Cosmos at IPAC, Digitalcitizen.ca, Wonderopolis.org and HowStuffWorks, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Episode 9, "The Lives of the Stars." Stacks: Endowment for Human Development, National Park Service, NASA Earth Observatory, NASA, Cool Cosmos at IPAC, Space.com, Solstation.com, HyperPhysics/Georgia State TO THE SUPERNOVA OUTSIDE THE 18.5 TIMES THE DISTANCE BETWEEN TO STRUVE 2398, A STAR SYSTEM IN THE CONSTELLATION DRACO SOMEWHERE 53 FEET ABOVE THE STATUE OF LIBERTY UNDERNEATH LOW-EARTH ORBIT *LOGARITHMIC SCALE MORE THAN A QUARTER REMNANT CASSIOPEIA A OBSERVABLE OF THE WAY FROM EARTH TO THE MOON BETWEEN MERCURY AND THE SUN EARTH AND PLUTO UNIVERSE