I spoke with a theoretical physicist and he said he encountered 10^-120. Has something to do with attempts to describe/explain the universe... Dimitri
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Steve Lianoglou <mailinglist.honey...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Barry Rowlingson > <b.rowling...@lancaster.ac.uk> wrote: >> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.ber...@gene.com> wrote: >>> *** COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC *** >>> >>> Although machine precision (smallest numerical values that can be exactly >>> represented) is important for numerical calculations, what is the smallest >>> number that anyone has actually seen describing physical phenomena in >>> science? I've seen values of ca. 1e-20 or so routinely used in physics on >>> both size (e.g quarks) and time scales (lifetimes of evanescent particles). >>> Beyond that about the smallest values I've seen are about 1e-40 or so >>> seconds in discussions of Big Bang dynamics. Does anyone know of smaller >>> ones (and those I've quoted might certainly be off somewhat). >> >> Hmmm smaller than 1e40... Well, I think I've seen the charge on an >> electron given as much, much smaller than that... > > Here's another: after ~4 years of graduate school, Citibank is > starting to send me bank statements using these numbers to quantify > the amount of $$ I have in the bank ... > > "Oh, I just earned $.02 interest? ... thanks for the email > notification, Citibank!" > >>> Just curious. Hope this abuse of the list is not too egregious. Ignore if >>> you think it is. >> >> It's Casual Friday. > > :-) > > -steve > > -- > Steve Lianoglou > Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology > | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center > | Weill Medical College of Cornell University > Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Dimitri Liakhovitski Ninah.com dimitri.liakhovit...@ninah.com ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.