>I do wonder whether /any/ people can really appreciate the size of numbers
>with the magnitude of the Mersenne primes. Running down the list of known
>ones: (? signifies that I'm not sure how to represent the number)
I don't recall the details, but one nice example I heard to demonstrate
large probabilities was:
Imagine you have a little bulldozer (atomic sized of course :) (assume
hydrogen atoms since they be the smallest)
This little bulldozer is tasked with moving a universe sized # of atoms from
one side of a universe width to the other.
It can only move one atomic width each year while pushing each atom, and
then must move one atomic width each year on the way back to pick up the
next one.
The number of years it would take to move those atoms is, as you might
guess, the really big number being conceptualized.
Now...what I don't recall off the top of my head are (a) what's the estimate
for the number of atoms in the universe, (b) about what is the estimated
radius of the universe (if it's spherical at all, which, by big bang
standards, it should approximate), and (c) what's the width of a hydrogen
atom.
Perhaps if I'm feeling up to it, I'll find which book I read this example
in. It probably doesn't bear mentioning that I read this stuff in a book on
the odds of abiogenesis occurring. :) So just ignore that aspect. Probably
in Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" or Sproul's "Not a Chance"
Aaron
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