Math migrane

So, there was this cool post on AskReddit: What’s your favorite maths fact? And one of the comments was about Graham’s Number. Now you may know about the googol (10100). And if you know that one, you certainly know about the googolplex (10googol). And you’d be right in thinking that those numbers are big. And you know that those aren’t anywhere close to infinity. But if you want to think about large numbers, and kick your math up more than a few steps, read this post on going from 1,000,000 to Graham’s Number.

So, on the way to rather large numbers, you may see some mileposts:

These, and a googolplex, are pikers compared to Graham’s Number. To get there, you first have to go up the math ladder from counting, to addition, to multiplication, to exponentiation, to tetration (this is where my math migraine kicks in), to pentation, to hexation, and wayyy beyond.

If, and that’s a big if, you can wrap your mind around Graham’s Number, … well first off, you’re lying, just admit it … but this supremely large number, where there isn’t enough space in the universe to write down all the digits (the train passed that station long ago on this math journey, just read the article at the link), is not even approaching what infinity is. This isn’t anywhere close to aleph-null (ℵ0).