When I was a kid (40 years ago), the NYSE traded 13 million shares per day; the US budget deficit was measured in billions of dollars and the budget debt was hundreds of billions of dollars.
Now, we have multiplied these quantities by 100; they are measured in billions, hundreds of billions and 10+ trillion.
Will we be talking about quadrillions in 2060? What about the 24th century (in the Star Trek era)? I suppose if "things" increase by a factor of 100 every 40 (actually, let's say 50) years, then in 2363, we'll be talking about ...
1E13 (2012) --> 1E15 (2062) --> 1E17 (2112) --> 1E19 (2162) --> 1E21 (2212) --> 1E23 (2262) --> 1E25 (2312) --> 1E27 (2362)!
1E27 is
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Million
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Billion
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Trillion
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Quadrillion
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Quintillion
^ ^ ^ ^ Sextillion
^ ^ ^ Septillion
^ ^ Octillion
^ Nonillion
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers).
I predict the US National Debt will cross 1 nonillion dollars in 2362. Prove me wrong! Go ahead!
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Neutrinos are not faster than light (whew!)
As is well known now, the OPERA results on the faster-than-light neutrinos has been retracted. It seems that there was a loose cable that threw off the results by just about the right amount.
Wow!
Here is a link to an excellent blog post from the famous physicist, Lawrence Krauss, on this topic: http://phys.org/news/2011-10-cern-colliding-theories.html. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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