Googolplex

A googolplex is 10^googol, or 10^(10^100). It cannot be written out in full because it has more digits than atoms in the universe.

If a googol is unimaginably large, a googolplex is unimaginably unimaginable. It's 10 raised to the power of a googol. To write it out in decimal notation, you'd need to write a 1 followed by 10^100 zeros. Since the observable universe has only about 10^80 atoms, you couldn't write a googolplex even if every atom in the universe were used as a digit.

A googolplex has no physical application. It exists purely in mathematics as an example of a number that is finite and well-defined but utterly beyond representation. Google's headquarters is named the "Googleplex" as a play on this term.

To put it in perspective: the number of possible chess games (the Shannon number) is estimated at about 10^120. A googolplex dwarfs even this. The number of possible states of the entire universe might be around 10^(10^70), which is still incomparably smaller than a googolplex.

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More terms

BillionOne billion (1,000,000,000) is 10^9, or one thousand millions. A billion seconds is about 31.7 years.GoogolA googol is 10^100 (1 followed by 100 zeros). It far exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe (~10^80).InnumeracyInnumeracy is the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy: the inability to understand and work with numbers and basic mathematical concepts.MillionOne million (1,000,000) is 10^6, or one thousand thousands. A million seconds is about 11.5 days.Order of MagnitudeAn order of magnitude is a factor of 10. Two numbers differ by one order of magnitude if one is roughly 10 times the other.View all glossary terms