Have you Googled today? Have you googoled today? Do you know what a Googleplex is? Can you identify a googolplex? Could you explain the difference between Google - which can be a noun or a verb these days - and a googol, which is only a noun as far as I can determine.
Today is Google's thirteenth birthday and, consequently, the Google Doodle reflects Google, Inc's birthday celebration. Google's corporate headquarters, affectionately known as Googleplex, is in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California. A googolplex, on the other hand, is a completely different animal, although given time, Google, Inc. may strive to become as big as a googolplex.
Mathematical lore has it that in 1938 one Edward Kasner's nine-year old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term "googol", then proposed the term googolplex to be "the numeral one, followed by writing zeros until you get tired. This seems a bit sophisticated for a nine-year old, but what the heck! This could have been a very precocious nine-year old. Considering that "googol" and "googolplex" are mathematical terms, then it seems logical that what Carl Sagan said about a "googolplex" would be a verifiable definition of the concept. The esteemed Mr. Sagan estimated that "writing a googolplex in numerals would be physically impossible since doing so would require more space than the known universe provides."
Now this, readers, would be an enormous amount of zeros following a one. I certainly not can fathom a number so large, nor can I imagine my hand holding a writing instrument for the amount of time it would take to create a number so large that the known universe could no longer accommodate it. A googolplex is an infinite number that I cannot imagine, nor wrap my non-mathematical brain around.
When my family was still a nuclear unit, mealtimes were sometimes spent in mathematical-speak with discussions surrounding differential equations - also known to mathematical types as "diffy Q's" and it was not uncommon for the children to recite the numbers following a million; i.e. billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, etc. right up to decillion, which then always prompted the question, "What is the largest number possible?" (Yes, we had mealtime conversations like this.) Back then, Google wasn't even a gleam in the creator's eye, so googol was the only game in town. Now I would wager a guess that most kids would never know what a "googol" is and would simply assume whomever wrote the word down misspelled "Google".
Happy Birthday, Google. Perhaps you will have a googol years of existence.
Ancora imparo
