The Googol

When setting this question – or adjudicating it – it's important to remember that "a googolplex" is an incorrect answer. A googolplex is ten to the power of a googol – or 1 followed by a googol of zeros.

A googol is a very big number. For example, the number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated to be around 10 to the power 80. (Actually between 10⁷⁸ and 10⁸².) In other words, to have a googol of atoms you would need about 10²⁰ universes – or a hundred quintillion (that's a hundred million million million)!

And that's just a googol. A googolplex is a really stupidly high number. It's much, much bigger than a googol squared, or a googol of googols (which is the same thing) – that would be ten to the power of 200.

The number of googols in a googolplex is ten to the power of (a googol minus one hundred). A hundred is so much smaller than a googol that trying to work out the number of googols in a googolplex makes my brain hurt – and I had a scientific education. In other words, my advice is – don't even go there!

The point is, however, that the googol is not really all that significant in science. It was invented by the American mathematician Edward Kasner for his book Mathematics and the Imagination, which was published in 1940. He used it to illustrate the difference between a very large number and infinity. Kasner describes in the book how the term was coined by his nine–year–old nephew Milton Sirotta, and also how Milton suggested the term googolplex, meaning "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition.

If you were to write down a googol, it would look like this:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

It has been estimated that you could never write down a googolplex as a number, because there isn't enough space in the universe.

The Googleplex, by the way, is in Silicon Valley, California. It's the headquarters of Google, Inc.