Of Wise Men, Gold and Googols

I have way too much useless information in my head, here being but two examples.

1. Imagine a box 51 feet tall, 51 feet wide and 51 feet deep...all of the gold ever mined thoughout history would fit into that box. Now imagine that the Three Wise Men had invested one dollar at 6% interest, and one of their heirs is now going to cash out the proceeds of the investment. (I know, I know there were no dollars then, but bear with me.) At $600 per ounce, how much of that gold could they buy?

The size of the piece of gold, if shaped into a sphere, with the sphere centered on the sun, would extend to the orbit of Pluto. If you were to put the earth on that sphere, its size would be comparable to the size of a house on the earth's surface.

This is mind-boggling, and when I first heard this story many years ago, I was skeptical. Then I did the math. It's true.

2. A googol is a number, Specifically, it is 10 raised to the 100th power. To write out that number, you would write a "1" followed by 100 zeros. A googolplex is 10 to the googol power. To write that number out, you would write a "1" followed by a googol of zeros.

Suppose you wanted to write out that googolplex. How big a piece of paper would you need?

The paper needed to write the number would not fit into the known universe.

Things like this will give you a headache if you think about them long enough, so just move on to another blog now...