Bilbo Biggins

So last weekend I had an idea.  At first I thought it was a bad idea, but then I realized that it was not a bad idea.  The idea was to find the biggest number ever.  Sounds retarded, right?  That's what I thought at first too.  So I got up and Googled it.  Turns out there are some pretty big numbers out there.  Bigger numbers than I would have imagined.  I suppose we should start out with a smallish number such as a googol.  A googol is a 1 with 100 zeros behind it.  I could easily type out a googol right now if I wanted to.  One hundred zeros would probably take less than a minute to type out.  From what I can tell from my limited amount of research on the subject, there isn't really a googol of anything though.  In reality, there could never be a googol of anything because the universe just doesn't have enough stuff in it.  Scientists estimate that there are between 10^72 and 10^87 particles in the universe.  That falls really short of 10^100.  Really really short.  Unfortunately, the universe is a lot of empty space.  However, if the universe was packed to the edges with neutrons (which are around 1/1,000th the size of an atom) there would be 10^130 neutrons...in 15 billion light years of space.  So a googol is a number I can sorta wrap my head around.  Its big, but not that big.  I suppose next in line would be the googolplex.  The googolplex is much much bigger.  It would be a 1 followed by a googol zeros.  It can only really be written out using exponents (like 10^10^100).  This number could obviously not be written because we don't even have a googol of particles in the universe...so a googol of zeros is a bit overboard.  There's no real way to use this number for anything.  So now it might seem like we're getting to the end of big numbers, but a googolplex is about as big as a a speck on the knee of a flea compared with 'busy beaver numbers'.  I don't understand 'busy beaver numbers' no matter how many websites I go to.  I think I need more info on the different symbols they use, so if there are any math wizards out there that can explain some of the stuff for me, that would be great.  So that about does it for me an big numbers.  I figure I won't need to be counting more stuff than there is in the universe.  Since going on this little numerical adventure last weekend, I've really started to like the number 1 a lot more.  So, my next blog entry will probably try to cover small things.  :)