The Second Biggest Number ~ Nov 14, '17
by Nick the Bookman, edited by Lamma-Gung
"Bible legend states that the trouble started after Eve ate the Golden Apple of Discord. This was the forbidding fruit. An angry God sent his wraith. Man fell from the space of grace. It was mostly downhill skiing from there". This little gem (and a few others) are going to be strewn throughout this article. A bit of comic relief. They'll be italicised so you can jump over
the possibly boring maths. They all come from a book titled
"Non Campus Mentis", detailing genuine assumptions, bloopers and assorted alternative facts. Taken from
the examination papers of college students. A joyous updating of
"1066 and All That" - a collection of howlers from students at Eton. Published in 1930 and showing that creative stupidity is in no danger of decline.
The authors all share
the same name. Anonymous. If you've seen
the photo of
the book cover (see below) accompanying this piece, revel in
the picture of
the student who looks like Alfred E. Newman's smarter(ish) cousin. A nice touch.
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"Prehistoricle people spent all day banging rocks together so they could find something to eat. This was the Stoned Age". And that was sort of how I was feeling one fine Sunday afternoon in
the early summer. I was enjoying a state of beer enhanced brain bogglement and I thought that I'd ask you kind passers-by if you knew what
the second biggest number is. A creative afternoon ensued. Phil wrote on Lamma Facebook that his answer is infinity minus one. Alan responded with infinities of infinities for infinity and beyond. Zero is
the absolute aleph point. Dead centre, separating positive and negative numbers. Lamma-Gung was overjoyed that
the erudition level of Lamma Facebook had risen for a few moments. My favourite answer came from
the father of a two-year old daughter. She said
the second highest number is nine, because she can only count up to ten. An absolutely correct answer for her math matrix which goes from one to ten. Out of
the mouths of babes...
"Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans. Lust was a must for the Epicureans... Pythagorus fathered the triangle. U. Clid proved there is more than one side to every plain. Archimedes made the first steamboat and power drill". So I started thinking about big numbers. Like Skewes (pronounced Skew-ease).
The late and prolific, science fact and fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote an essay about Stanley Skewes. He was tasked to try and find
the probability point where
the number of primes would increase in
the endless numerical chain, before decreasing again. Remember that there are an infinite amount of prime numbers. But just not as many as
the infinite amount of all numbers. Or something like that. He came up with an answer which is ten to
the power of ten to
the power of thirty four. Which i think is
the same as ten to
the power of forty four.
"A tidal wave of Goths, Hungs and Zulus impacted Rome. Athena the Hun rampaged the Balkans where he plumaged and tortured people...Society was crumpity. Neo-Platonists celebrated the joys of self-abuse...In the early Middle Ages, female nuns were free to commit random acts of contrition and redemption and forcibly enclustered in harems". Moving on up like Primal Scream, there's a wonderful film called
"Powers of Ten" (1977) which may well have been updated by now. Anyway, it reveals that
the totality of our SpaceTimeContinuum can be contained in
the number ten to
the power of sixty one. Going outward from a ten foot room, i.e. ten to
the power of one, there are twenty six jumps, i.e. ten to
the power of twenty six which is
the scale of
the observable universe. Going inward from Zero, there are ten to
the power of minus thirty five jumps. That is
the Planck Length and
the most likely domain of
the forces encompassing String Theory. Of course, this number could expand exponentially, if we accept
the possibility of Parallel Dimensions and
The Multiverse.
"Monks were assigned to monkeries where they were suppose to live as nuns... Fryers were required to take a vow of pottery... Metrification of the flesh was an important ritual... In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular... A class of yeowls arose... Revolters ran apluck... The Black Death spread from inflected rats, was passed around by midgets and death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns... The Hundred Years War (1320-1600) was fought over English holidays in France... The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt". So, after ten to
the power of sixty one, we enter
the Realm of Numbers that transcend
the Reality Of our Totality. There's a Googol, which is ten to
the power of one hundred and also a Googolplex. There's a higher Probability number which is
the odds on a person achieving a perfect score on their SAT by guessing
the correct answers. In a wonderful book called
"What If?" and subtitled
"Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by Randall Munroe he works out that
the number in question is one in twenty seven quinquatrigintillion.
Spelt out another way it's an equation reading one over two point seven times ten to
the power of one hundred and ten. (Sorry for writing out all these numbers. This keyboard can't provide
the mathematical symbols to write all
the words in figures.) By
the way, Randall Munroe is also an excellent comic/cartoonist. He's praised as Totally Brilliant and Nerd Royalty on
the cover of
the book and his website is
http://www.xkcd.com. He's done all
the heavy lifting so you don't have to. Just lie back and wallow in
the weird wisdom on his iconic webcomic.
"Nineteenth Century America was an unequal society where only white males could download access to the power serge... The major cause of the Civil War is when slavery spread its ugly testicles across the West... It began in 1830 and many soldiers repeatedly gave their lives up... United States Grant was a Civil War heroe who proved corrupulent as President and died after drinking up to twenty cigars a day... Meanwhile, culture fomented from Europe's tip to its top... Art plopped off the deep end and sailed up the creek without a paddle... Cubism and Splatterism became the rage... Picasso painted the Mona Lisa... Music reeked with reality... Children born to Europeans and Asians were known as Euthanasians...The Russo-Japanese War exploded between Japan and Italy... Teddy (J.R.) Roseaveld threatened with his big stick... Germany's William Two had a big chimp on his shoulder while Auto von Bismarck kept both sides from the middle"."High up in
the North in
the land called Svithjod there stands a rock. It's a hundred miles high and wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to
the rock to sharpen its beak. When
the rock has been worn away, a single day of eternity will have gone by".
I first read this mesmeric word picture by Hendrik Willem Van Loon in a novel of First Contact called
"Fade Out" by Patrick Tilley back in
the Seventies.
The protagonists loved this "novel" way of expressing a very large indeterminate number. Patrick Tilley also wrote
the six-part series
"The Am-Trak War" and a stand alone book about a time -travelling Jesus who materialises, fresh from his execution, in current (then) day New York. Brilliant sci-fi and a stunning re-evaluation of our deepest faiths. It's called
"Mission" and hopefully is still in print. Anyway, Randall has worked out that
the eventual total eradication of
the hundred mile high and wide hill, will take One Eternal Day. That's roughly equivalent to ten to
the power of thirty two years. Times three hundred and sixty five Eternal Days for an Eternal Year. Times one hundred Eternal Years for an Eternal Century. Continue through an Eternal Millennium and then on to Ten Thousand Eternal Years. Which is about
the same time it would take you to read every Twitter tweet that's has/is/will be published. That's a lot larger number than
the SAT probability figure.
"Japan boomed Pearl Harbour, the main U.S. base in Southern California... American sailors watched in shock as the skies filled with Japanese zebras... The perverbial chickens laid by the poor peace treaties after World War One all came to roast... The Germans made a "Blintz Krieg" around France's Marginal Line... Hitler's attack on Russia was secretly called "Operation Barbarella"... The German invaders habit of slaughtering innocent civilians gave them an image problem... the Russians defended Stalingrad feercely as the city was named after Lenin... casualties sprouted on both sides... Hitler became depressed and crawled under Berlin. He had his wife Evita put to sleep and then shot himself in the bonker... The Second World War was not concluded until 1957". It's starting to become apparent that really big numbers are best written as word pictures or in lengthy phrases. So, I'll try to wrap this piece up by saying that as far as I'm concerned
the second biggest number is best stated as "
The Second Biggest Number". Both precise and inexact at
the same time. Thanks to everyone who played along. You're all good sports. And so to close, here's a couple of final thoughts....
"History grundled onwards. International relationships moved to the broodle stage... one index of this situation is a poor morality rate... another problem is lack of practise with self-rain... the plurious of wealth is uneven... the rural populus is reduced to tenament farming... pedestrians of rich countries should listen to their conscious more, thus making the possibility of better times less of a pipe steam... it is now the age of now. This concept grinds our critical seething minds to a halt."