What is the largest number you know. The biggest numbers in the world

A child today asked: "What is the name of the largest number in the world?" The question is interesting. I got into the Internet and on the first line of Yandex I found a detailed article in LiveJournal. Everything is detailed there. It turns out that there are two systems for naming numbers: English and American. And, for example, a quadrillion according to the English and American systems are completely different numbers! The largest non-composite number is Million = 10 to the power of 3003.
As a result, the son came to a completely reasonable input that one can count indefinitely.

Original taken from ctac The largest number in the world

As a child, I was tormented by the question of what kind of
the biggest number, and I've been harassing this stupid
a question for almost everyone. Knowing the number
million, I asked if there is a number greater
million. Billion? And more than a billion? Trillion?
And more than a trillion? Finally found someone smart
who explained to me that the question is stupid, because
enough to add to
to a large number one, and it turns out that it
has never been the biggest since there exist
the number is even greater.

And now, after many years, I decided to ask myself another
question, namely: what is the most
a large number that has its own
title? Fortunately, now there is an Internet and puzzle
they can be patient search engines that do not
will call my questions idiotic ;-).
Actually, this is what I did, and this is the result
found out.

Number	Latin name	Russian prefix
1	unus	en-
2	duo	duo-
3	tres	three-
4	quattuor	quadri-
5	quinque	quinti-
6	sex	sexty
7	September	septi-
8	octo	octi-
9	novem	noni-
10	decem	deci-

There are two systems for naming numbers −
American and English.

The American system is built quite
simply. All names of large numbers are built like this:
at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number,
and at the end, the suffix -million is added to it.
The exception is the name "million"
which is the name of the number one thousand (lat. mille)
and the magnifying suffix -million (see table).
This is how numbers come out - trillion, quadrillion,
quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion,
nonillion and decillion. American system
used in USA, Canada, France and Russia.
Find out the number of zeros in a number written by
American system, you can use a simple formula
3 x+3 (where x is a Latin numeral).

English naming system most
widespread in the world. It is used, for example, in
Great Britain and Spain, as well as in most
former English and Spanish colonies. Titles
numbers in this system are built like this: like this: to
add a suffix to the Latin numeral
-million, the next number (1000 times greater)
built on the same principle
Latin numeral, but the suffix is -billion.
That is, after a trillion in the English system
goes a trillion, and only then a quadrillion, for
followed by a quadrillion, and so on. So
thus, a quadrillion in English and
American systems are completely different
numbers! Find the number of zeros in a number
written in the English system and
ending with the suffix -million, you can
formula 6 x+3 (where x is a Latin numeral) and
by the formula 6 x+6 for numbers ending in
-billion.

Transferred from the English system to the Russian language
only the number billion (10 9), which is still
it would be more correct to call it what it is called
Americans - by a billion, since we have adopted
It's the American system. But who do we have
the country is doing something according to the rules! ;-) By the way,
sometimes in Russian they use the word
trillion (you can see for yourself,
running a search in Google or Yandex) and means it, judging by
everything, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.

In addition to numbers written using Latin
prefixes in the American or English system,
the so-called off-system numbers are also known,
those. numbers that have their own
names without any Latin prefixes. Such
there are several numbers, but more about them I
I'll tell you a little later.

Let's go back to writing with the help of Latin
numerals. It would seem that they can
write numbers to infinity, but this is not
quite so. Now I will explain why. Let's see for
beginning as the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:

Name	Number
Unit	10 0
Ten	10 1
Hundred	10 2
One thousand	10 3
Million	10 6
Billion	10 9
Trillion	10 12
quadrillion	10 15
Quintillion	10 18
Sextillion	10 21
Septillion	10 24
Octillion	10 27
Quintillion	10 30
Decillion	10 33

And so, now the question arises, what next. What
there for a decillion? In principle, it is possible, of course,
by combining prefixes to generate such
monsters like: andecillion, duodecillion,
tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion,
sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and
novemdecillion, but these will already be composite
names, but we were interested in
own number names. Therefore own
names according to this system, in addition to those indicated above, there are also
you can only get three
- vigintillion (from lat. viginti —
twenty), centillion (from lat. percent- one hundred) and
million (from lat. mille- one thousand). More
thousands of proper names for numbers among the Romans
was not available (all numbers over a thousand they had
composite). For example, a million (1,000,000) Romans
called centena milia, i.e. "ten hundred
thousand". And now, in fact, the table:

Thus, according to a similar system of numbers
greater than 10 3003 , which would have
get your own, non-compound name
impossible! However, more numbers
million are known - these are the very
off-system numbers. Finally, let's talk about them.

Name	Number
myriad	10 4
googol	10 100
Asankheyya	10 140
Googolplex	10 10 100
Skuse's second number	10 10 10 1000
Mega	2 (in Moser notation)
Megiston	10 (in Moser notation)
Moser	2 (in Moser notation)
Graham number	G 63 (in Graham's notation)
Stasplex	G 100 (in Graham's notation)

The smallest such number is myriad
(it is even in Dahl's dictionary), which means
a hundred hundreds, that is, 10,000. True, this word
outdated and hardly used, but
curious that the word is widely used
"myriad", which means not at all
definite number, but countless, uncountable
lots of something. It is believed that the word myriad
(eng. myriad) came to European languages from the ancient
Egypt.

googol(from English googol) is the number ten in
hundredth power, that is, one followed by one hundred zeros. ABOUT
"googole" was first written in 1938 in an article
"New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of the magazine
Scripta Mathematica American mathematician Edward Kasner
(Edward Kasner). According to him, call "googol"
a large number offered his nine year old
nephew of Milton Sirotta.
This number became well-known thanks to
named after him, a search engine Google. note that
"Google" is a trademark, and googol is a number.

In the famous Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutras,
related to 100 BC, there is a number asankhiya
(from Chinese asentzi- incalculable), equal to 10 140.
It is believed that this number is equal to the number
cosmic cycles necessary for gaining
nirvana.

Googolplex(English) googolplex) - number also
invented by Kasner with his nephew and
meaning one with a googol of zeros, i.e. 10 10 100 .
Here is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":

Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name
"googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was
asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it.
He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that
it had to have a name. At the same time that he suggested "googol" he gave a
name for a still larger number: "Googolplex." A googolplex is much larger than a
googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.

Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R.
Newman.

Even more than a googolplex number is a number
Skewes "number" was proposed by Skewes in 1933
year (Skewes. J. London Math. soc. 8 , 277-283, 1933.) at
hypothesis proof
Riemann concerning prime numbers. It
means e to the extent e to the extent e in
powers of 79, i.e. e e e 79 . Later,
Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x)-Li(x)."
Math. Comput. 48 , 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to e e 27/4 ,
which is approximately equal to 8.185 10 370 . understandable
the point is that since the value of the Skewes number depends on
numbers e, then it is not an integer, so
we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to
recall other non-natural numbers - number
pi, e, Avogadro's number, etc.

But it should be noted that there is a second number
Skewes, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk 2,
which is even greater than the first Skewes number (Sk 1).
Skuse's second number, was introduced by J.
Skewes in the same article to denote a number, up to
which the Riemann hypothesis is valid. Sk 2
equals 10 10 10 10 3 , i.e. 10 10 10 1000
.

As you understand, the more in the number of degrees,
the more difficult it is to understand which of the numbers is larger.
For example, looking at the Skewes numbers, without
special calculations are almost impossible
figure out which of the two numbers is greater. So
Thus, for superlarge numbers, use
degrees becomes uncomfortable. Moreover, it is possible
come up with such numbers (and they have already been invented) when
degrees of degrees just don't fit on the page.
Yes, what a page! They won't fit, even in a book,
the size of the entire universe! In this case, rise
The question is how to write them down. Trouble how are you
understand is decidable, and mathematicians have developed
several principles for writing such numbers.
True, every mathematician who asked this
problem came up with his own way of recording that
led to the existence of several, unrelated
with each other, the ways to write numbers are
notations by Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.

Consider the notation of Hugo Stenhaus (H. Steinhaus. Mathematical
Snapshots, 3rd edn. 1983), which is quite simple. Stein
house suggested writing large numbers inside
geometric shapes - triangle, square and
circle:

Steinhouse came up with two new extra-large
numbers. He named a number Mega, and the number is Megiston.

Mathematician Leo Moser finalized the notation
Stenhouse, which was limited to what if
it was necessary to write down the numbers much more
megiston, there were difficulties and inconveniences, so
how I had to draw many circles one
inside another. Moser suggested after squares
draw not circles, but pentagons, then
hexagons and so on. He also suggested
formal notation for these polygons,
to be able to write numbers without drawing
complex drawings. Moser notation looks like this:

Thus, according to the Moser notation
steinhouse mega is written as 2, and
megiston as 10. In addition, Leo Moser suggested
call a polygon with the number of sides equal to
mega - megagon. And suggested the number "2 in
Megagon", that is, 2. This number has become
known as the Moser's number or simply
how moser.

But the moser is not the largest number. the biggest
number ever used in
mathematical proof, is
limit, known as Graham number
(Graham's number), first used in 1977 in
proof of one estimate in the Ramsey theory. It
associated with bichromatic hypercubes and not
can be expressed without a special 64-level
systems of special mathematical symbols,
introduced by Knuth in 1976.

Unfortunately, the number written in Knuth notation
cannot be converted to Moser notation.
Therefore, this system will also have to be explained. IN
In principle, there is nothing complicated in it either. Donald
Knut (yes, yes, this is the same Knut who wrote
"The Art of Programming" and created
TeX editor) came up with the concept of a superpower,
which he proposed to write with arrows,
upward:

In general, it looks like this:

I think that everything is clear, so let's get back to the number
Graham. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:

The number G 63 began to be called number
Graham(it is often denoted simply as G).
This number is the largest known in
world number and even listed in the "Book of Records
Guinness. "Ah, that Graham's number is greater than the number
Moser.

P.S. To be of great benefit
to all mankind and be glorified through the ages, I
I decided to come up with and name the biggest
number. This number will be called stasplex And
it is equal to the number G 100 . Remember it and when
your children will ask what is the biggest
world number, tell them what this number is called stasplex.

The question "What is the largest number in the world?" is, to say the least, incorrect. There are both different systems of calculus - decimal, binary and hexadecimal, as well as various categories of numbers - semi-simple and prime, the latter being divided into legal and illegal. In addition, there are the numbers of Skewes (Skewes "number), Steinhaus and other mathematicians who either jokingly or seriously invent and put to the public such exotics as "megiston" or "moser".

What is the largest decimal number in the world

From the decimal system, most "non-mathematicians" are well aware of the million, billion and trillion. Moreover, if a million among Russians is mainly associated with a dollar bribe that can be carried away in a suitcase, then where to shove a billion (not to mention a trillion) North American banknotes - most do not have enough imagination. However, in the theory of large numbers, there are such concepts as quadrillion (ten to the fifteenth power - 1015), sextillion (1021) and octillion (1027).

In English, the most widely used decimal system in the world, the maximum number is decillion - 1033.

In 1938, in connection with the development of applied mathematics and the expansion of the micro- and macrocosms, Professor of Columbia University (USA), Edward Kasner published on the pages of the journal "Scripta Mathematica" the proposal of his nine-year-old nephew to use the decimal system as the most a large number "googol" ("googol") - representing ten to the hundredth power (10100), which on paper is expressed as a unit with one hundred zeros. However, they did not stop there and a few years later they proposed to put into circulation the new largest number in the world - "googolplex" (googolplex), which is ten raised to the tenth power and again raised to the hundredth power - (1010) 100, expressed by one, to which a googol of zeros is assigned to the right. However, for the majority of even professional mathematicians, both "googol" and "googolplex" are of purely speculative interest, and it is unlikely that they can be applied to anything in everyday practice.

exotic numbers

What is the largest number in the world among prime numbers - those that can only be divided by themselves and by one. One of the first to record the largest prime number, 2,147,483,647, was the great mathematician Leonhard Euler. As of January 2016, this number is an expression calculated as 274 207 281 - 1.

Sooner or later, everyone is tormented by the question, what is the largest number. A child's question can be answered in a million. What's next? Trillion. And even further? In fact, the answer to the question of what are the largest numbers is simple. It is simply worth adding one to the largest number, as it will no longer be the largest. This procedure can be continued indefinitely. Those. it turns out there is no largest number in the world? Is it infinity?

But if you ask yourself: what is the largest number that exists, and what is its own name? Now we all know...

There are two systems for naming numbers - American and English.

The American system is built quite simply. All names of large numbers are built like this: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and at the end the suffix -million is added to it. The exception is the name "million" which is the name of the number one thousand (lat. mille) and the magnifying suffix -million (see table). So the numbers are obtained - trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion. The American system is used in the USA, Canada, France and Russia. You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the American system using the simple formula 3 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral).

The English naming system is the most common in the world. It is used, for example, in Great Britain and Spain, as well as in most of the former English and Spanish colonies. The names of numbers in this system are built like this: like this: a suffix -million is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is built according to the principle - the same Latin numeral, but the suffix is -billion. That is, after a trillion in the English system comes a trillion, and only then a quadrillion, followed by a quadrillion, and so on. Thus, a quadrillion according to the English and American systems are completely different numbers! You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the English system and ending with the suffix -million using the formula 6 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral) and using the formula 6 x + 6 for numbers ending in -billion.

Only the number billion (10 9) passed from the English system into the Russian language, which, nevertheless, would be more correct to call it the way the Americans call it - a billion, since we have adopted the American system. But who in our country does something according to the rules! 😉 By the way, sometimes the word trillion is also used in Russian (you can see for yourself by running a search in Google or Yandex) and it means, apparently, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.

In addition to numbers written using Latin prefixes in the American or English system, the so-called off-system numbers are also known, i.e. numbers that have their own names without any Latin prefixes. There are several such numbers, but I will talk about them in more detail a little later.

Let's go back to writing using Latin numerals. It would seem that they can write numbers to infinity, but this is not entirely true. Now I will explain why. First, let's see how the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:

And so, now the question arises, what next. What is a decillion? In principle, it is possible, of course, by combining prefixes to generate such monsters as: andecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion, but these will already be compound names, and we were interested in our own names numbers. Therefore, according to this system, in addition to the above, you can still get only three proper names - vigintillion (from lat. viginti- twenty), centillion (from lat. percent- one hundred) and a million (from lat. mille- one thousand). The Romans did not have more than a thousand proper names for numbers (all numbers over a thousand were composite). For example, a million (1,000,000) Romans called centena milia i.e. ten hundred thousand. And now, actually, the table:

Thus, according to a similar system, numbers greater than 10 3003, which would have its own, non-compound name, cannot be obtained! But nevertheless, numbers greater than a million are known - these are the same off-system numbers. Finally, let's talk about them.

The smallest such number is a myriad (it is even in Dahl's dictionary), which means a hundred hundreds, that is, 10,000. True, this word is outdated and practically not used, but it is curious that the word "myriad" is widely used, which does not mean a certain number at all, but an uncountable, uncountable set of something. It is believed that the word myriad (English myriad) came to European languages from ancient Egypt.

There are different opinions about the origin of this number. Some believe that it originated in Egypt, while others believe that it was born only in Ancient Greece. Be that as it may, in fact, the myriad gained fame precisely thanks to the Greeks. Myriad was the name for 10,000, and there were no names for numbers over ten thousand. However, in the note "Psammit" (i.e., the calculus of sand), Archimedes showed how one can systematically build and name arbitrarily large numbers. In particular, placing 10,000 (myriad) grains of sand in a poppy seed, he finds that in the Universe (a sphere with a diameter of a myriad of Earth diameters) no more than 1063 grains of sand would fit (in our notation). It is curious that modern calculations of the number of atoms in the visible universe lead to the number 1067 (only a myriad times more). The names of the numbers Archimedes suggested are as follows:
1 myriad = 104.
1 di-myriad = myriad myriad = 108.
1 tri-myriad = di-myriad di-myriad = 1016.
1 tetra-myriad = three-myriad three-myriad = 1032.
etc.

Googol (from the English googol) is the number ten to the hundredth power, that is, one with one hundred zeros. The "googol" was first written about in 1938 in the article "New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of the journal Scripta Mathematica by the American mathematician Edward Kasner. According to him, his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling a large number "googol". This number became well-known thanks to the Google search engine named after him. Note that "Google" is a trademark and googol is a number.

Edward Kasner.

On the Internet, you can often find mention that Google is the largest number in the world, but this is not so ...

In the well-known Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutra, dating back to 100 BC, the number Asankheya (from the Chinese. asentzi- incalculable), equal to 10 140. It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles necessary to gain nirvana.

Googolplex (English) googolplex) - a number also invented by Kasner with his nephew and meaning one with a googol of zeros, that is, 10 10100. Here is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":

Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner"s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.

Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman.

Even more than a googolplex number, Skewes' number was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the power of 79, i.e. eee79. Later, Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x)-Li(x)." Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to ee27/4, which is approximately equal to 8.185 10370. It is clear that since the value of the Skewes number depends on the number e, then it is not an integer, so we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to recall other non-natural numbers - the number pi, the number e, etc.

But it should be noted that there is a second Skewes number, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk2, which is even larger than the first Skewes number (Sk1). The second Skuse number was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote a number for which the Riemann hypothesis is not valid. Sk2 is 101010103, which is 1010101000 .

As you understand, the more degrees there are, the more difficult it is to understand which of the numbers is greater. For example, looking at the Skewes numbers, without special calculations, it is almost impossible to understand which of these two numbers is larger. Thus, for superlarge numbers, it becomes inconvenient to use powers. Moreover, you can come up with such numbers (and they have already been invented) when the degrees of degrees simply do not fit on the page. Yes, what a page! They won't even fit into a book the size of the entire universe! In this case, the question arises how to write them down. The problem, as you understand, is solvable, and mathematicians have developed several principles for writing such numbers. True, every mathematician who asked this problem came up with his own way of writing, which led to the existence of several, unrelated, ways to write numbers - these are the notations of Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.

Consider the notation of Hugo Stenhaus (H. Steinhaus. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd edn. 1983), which is quite simple. Steinhouse suggested writing large numbers inside geometric shapes - a triangle, a square and a circle:

Steinhouse came up with two new super-large numbers. He called the number - Mega, and the number - Megiston.

The mathematician Leo Moser refined Stenhouse's notation, which was limited by the fact that if it was necessary to write numbers much larger than a megiston, difficulties and inconveniences arose, since many circles had to be drawn one inside the other. Moser suggested drawing not circles after squares, but pentagons, then hexagons, and so on. He also proposed a formal notation for these polygons, so that numbers could be written without drawing complex patterns. Moser notation looks like this:

- n[k+1] = "n in n k-gons" = n[k]n.

Thus, according to Moser's notation, Steinhouse's mega is written as 2, and megiston as 10. In addition, Leo Moser suggested calling a polygon with the number of sides equal to mega - megagon. And he proposed the number "2 in Megagon", that is, 2. This number became known as the Moser's number, or simply as a moser.

But the moser is not the largest number. The largest number ever used in a mathematical proof is the limiting value known as Graham's number, first used in 1977 in the proof of one estimate in Ramsey theory. It is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed without the special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976.

Unfortunately, the number written in the Knuth notation cannot be translated into the Moser notation. Therefore, this system will also have to be explained. In principle, there is nothing complicated in it either. Donald Knuth (yes, yes, this is the same Knuth who wrote The Art of Programming and created the TeX editor) came up with the concept of superpower, which he proposed to write with arrows pointing up:

In general, it looks like this:

I think that everything is clear, so let's get back to Graham's number. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:

The number G63 became known as the Graham number (it is often denoted simply as G). This number is the largest known number in the world and is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

So there are numbers bigger than Graham's number? There is, of course, the Graham number + 1 to start with. As for the significant number…well, there are some fiendishly complex areas of mathematics (particularly the field known as combinatorics) and computer science that have numbers even larger than the Graham number. But we have almost reached the limit of what can be rationally and clearly explained.

sources http://ctac.livejournal.com/23807.html
http://www.uznayvse.ru/interesting-facts/samoe-bolshoe-chislo.html
http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/quiz/310/

https://masterok.livejournal.com/4481720.html

Sometimes people who are not related to mathematics wonder: what is the largest number? On the one hand, the answer is obvious - infinity. The bores will even clarify that "plus infinity" or "+∞" in the notation of mathematicians. But this answer will not convince the most corrosive, especially since this is not a natural number, but a mathematical abstraction. But having well understood the issue, they can open up an interesting problem.

Indeed, there is no size limit in this case, but there is a limit to human imagination. Each number has a name: ten, one hundred, billion, sextillion, and so on. But where does the fantasy of people end?

Not to be confused with a Google Corporation trademark, although they share a common origin. This number is written as 10100, that is, one followed by a tail of one hundred zeros. It is difficult to imagine it, but it was actively used in mathematics.

It's funny what his child came up with - the nephew of the mathematician Edward Kasner. In 1938, my uncle entertained younger relatives with arguments about very large numbers. To the indignation of the child, it turned out that such a wonderful number had no name, and he gave his version. Later, my uncle inserted it into one of his books, and the term stuck.

Theoretically, a googol is a natural number, because it can be used for counting. That's just hardly anyone has the patience to count to its end. Therefore, only theoretically.

As for the name of the company Google, then a common mistake crept in. The first investor and one of the co-founders, when writing the check, was in a hurry, and missed the letter "O", but in order to cash it, the company had to be registered under this spelling.

Googolplex

This number is a derivative of the googol, but significantly larger than it. The prefix "plex" means raising ten to the power of the base number, so guloplex is 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 100, or 101000.

The resulting number exceeds the number of particles in the observable universe, which is estimated at about 1080 degrees. But this did not stop scientists from increasing the number simply by adding the prefix "plex" to it: googolplexplex, googolplexplexplex, and so on. And for especially perverted mathematicians, they invented an option to increase without endless repetition of the prefix "plex" - they simply put Greek numbers in front of it: tetra (four), penta (five) and so on, up to deca (ten). The last option sounds like a googoldekaplex and means a tenfold cumulative repetition of the procedure for raising the number 10 to the power of its base. The main thing is not to imagine the result. You still won’t be able to realize it, but it’s easy to get a trauma to the psyche.

48th Mersen number

Main characters: Cooper, his computer and a new prime number

Relatively recently, about a year ago, it was possible to discover the next, 48th Mersen number. It is currently the largest prime number in the world. Recall that prime numbers are those that are only divisible without a remainder by 1 and themselves. The simplest examples are 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and so on. The problem is that the further into the wilds, the less often such numbers occur. But the more valuable is the discovery of each next one. For example, a new prime number consists of 17,425,170 digits if it is represented in the form of a decimal number system familiar to us. The previous one had about 12 million characters.

It was discovered by the American mathematician Curtis Cooper, who for the third time delighted the mathematical community with such a record. Just to check his result and prove that this number is really prime, it took 39 days of his personal computer.

This is how Graham's number is written in Knuth's arrow notation. It is difficult to say how to decipher this without having a completed higher education in theoretical mathematics. It is also impossible to write it down in the decimal form we are accustomed to: the observable Universe is simply not able to contain it. Fencing degree for degree, as in the case of googolplexes, is also not an option.

Good formula, but incomprehensible

So why do we need this seemingly useless number? Firstly, for the curious, it was placed in the Guinness Book of Records, and this is already a lot. Secondly, it was used to solve a problem that is part of the Ramsey problem, which is also incomprehensible, but sounds serious. Thirdly, this number is recognized as the largest ever used in mathematics, and not in comic proofs or intellectual games, but for solving a very specific mathematical problem.

Attention! The following information is dangerous for your mental health! By reading it, you accept responsibility for all the consequences!

For those who want to test their mind and meditate on the Graham number, we can try to explain it (but only try).

Imagine 33. It's pretty easy - you get 3*3*3=27. What if we now raise three to this number? It turns out 3 3 to the 3rd power, or 3 27. In decimal notation, this is equal to 7,625,597,484,987. A lot, but for now it can be understood.

In Knuth's arrow notation, this number can be displayed somewhat more simply - 33. But if you add only one arrow, it will turn out to be more difficult: 33, which means 33 to the power of 33 or in power notation. If expanded to decimal notation, we get 7,625,597,484,987 7,625,597,484,987 . Are you still able to follow the thought?

Next step: 33= 33 33 . That is, you need to calculate this wild number from the previous action and raise it to the same power.

And 33 is just the first of the 64 members of Graham's number. To get the second one, you need to calculate the result of this furious formula, and substitute the corresponding number of arrows into the 3(...)3 scheme. And so on, 63 more times.

I wonder if someone besides him and a dozen other supermathematicians will be able to get at least to the middle of the sequence and not go crazy at the same time?

Did you understand something? We are not. But what a thrill!

Why are the largest numbers needed? It is difficult for the layman to understand and realize this. But a few specialists with their help are able to present new technological toys to the inhabitants: phones, computers, tablets. The townsfolk are also not able to understand how they work, but they are happy to use them for their own entertainment. And everyone is happy: the townsfolk get their toys, "supernerds" - the opportunity to play their mind games for a long time.

June 17th, 2015

“I see clumps of vague numbers lurking out there in the dark, behind the little spot of light that the mind candle gives. They whisper to each other; talking about who knows what. Perhaps they do not like us very much for capturing their little brothers with our minds. Or maybe they just lead an unambiguous numerical way of life, out there, beyond our understanding.''
Douglas Ray

We continue ours. Today we have numbers...

But if you ask yourself: what is the largest number that exists, and what is its own name?

Now we all know...

There are two systems for naming numbers - American and English.

Only the number billion (10 9 ) passed from the English system into the Russian language, which, nevertheless, would be more correct to call it the way the Americans call it - a billion, since we have adopted the American system. But who in our country does something according to the rules! ;-) By the way, sometimes the word trillion is also used in Russian (you can see for yourself by running a search in Google or Yandex) and it means, apparently, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.

Let's go back to writing using Latin numerals. It would seem that they can write numbers to infinity, but this is not entirely true. Now I will explain why. Let's first see how the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:

And so, now the question arises, what next. What is a decillion? In principle, it is possible, of course, by combining prefixes to generate such monsters as: andecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion, but these will already be compound names, and we were interested in our own names numbers. Therefore, according to this system, in addition to those indicated above, you can still get only three - vigintillion (from lat.viginti- twenty), centillion (from lat.percent- one hundred) and a million (from lat.mille- one thousand). The Romans did not have more than a thousand proper names for numbers (all numbers over a thousand were composite). For example, a million (1,000,000) Romans calledcentena miliai.e. ten hundred thousand. And now, actually, the table:

Thus, according to a similar system, numbers are greater than 10 3003 , which would have its own, non-compound name, it is impossible to get! But nevertheless, numbers greater than a million are known - these are the very non-systemic numbers. Finally, let's talk about them.

There are different opinions about the origin of this number. Some believe that it originated in Egypt, while others believe that it was born only in Ancient Greece. Be that as it may, in fact, the myriad gained fame precisely thanks to the Greeks. Myriad was the name for 10,000, and there were no names for numbers over ten thousand. However, in the note "Psammit" (i.e., the calculus of sand), Archimedes showed how one can systematically build and name arbitrarily large numbers. In particular, placing 10,000 (myriad) grains of sand in a poppy seed, he finds that in the Universe (a ball with a diameter of a myriad of Earth diameters) would fit (in our notation) no more than 10 63 grains of sand. It is curious that modern calculations of the number of atoms in the visible universe lead to the number 10 67 (only a myriad of times more). The names of the numbers Archimedes suggested are as follows:
1 myriad = 10 4 .
1 di-myriad = myriad myriad = 10 8 .
1 tri-myriad = di-myriad di-myriad = 10 16 .
1 tetra-myriad = three-myriad three-myriad = 10 32 .
etc.

Googol (from the English googol) is the number ten to the hundredth power, that is, one with one hundred zeros. The "googol" was first written about in 1938 in the article "New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of the journal Scripta Mathematica by the American mathematician Edward Kasner. According to him, his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling a large number "googol". This number became well-known thanks to the search engine named after him. Google. Note that "Google" is a trademark and googol is a number.

Edward Kasner.

On the Internet, you can often find mention that - but this is not so ...

Googolplex (English) googolplex) - a number also invented by Kasner with his nephew and meaning one with a googol of zeros, that is, 10 10100 . Here is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":

Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner"s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.
Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman.

Even larger than the googolplex number, Skewes' number was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the power of 79, i.e. ee e 79 . Later, Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x)-Li(x)." Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to ee 27/4 , which is approximately equal to 8.185 10 370 . It is clear that since the value of the Skewes number depends on the number e, then it is not an integer, so we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to recall other non-natural numbers - the number pi, the number e, etc.

But it should be noted that there is a second Skewes number, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk2 , which is even larger than the first Skewes number (Sk1 ). Skuse's second number, was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote a number for which the Riemann hypothesis is not valid. Sk2 is 1010 10103 , i.e. 1010 101000 .

Steinhouse came up with two new super-large numbers. He called the number - Mega, and the number - Megiston.

In general, it looks like this:

I think that everything is clear, so let's get back to Graham's number. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:

G1 = 3..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is 33.

G2 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G1 .

G3 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G2 .

G63 = ..3, where the number of superpower arrows is G62 .

The number G63 became known as the Graham number (it is often denoted simply as G). This number is the largest known number in the world and is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records. And here