Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!hao!ames!amdahl!oliveb!sun!falk
From: falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: NSA advertisment
Message-ID: <36402@sun.uucp>
Date: 14 Dec 87 18:13:58 GMT
References: <4781@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <139@piring.cwi.nl>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 32
Summary: c'mon people, do the math.

palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) writes:
>I just read a magazine add seeking people to work at the NSA (pg. 80R of
>Dec. 1987 IEEE Spectrum)
>The graphic is 10,000,0... (100 zeros) written on three lines.  The first
>paragraph of the text reads:
>	You're looking at a "googol." Ten raised to the 100th power.
>	One followed by 100 zeros.  Counting 24 hours a day, you would
>	need 120 years to reach a googol.  Two lifetimes.  It's a
>	number that's impossible to grasp.  A number beyond our imagination.
>... material deleted ...


When I was in junior high, I worked out a similar problem...

Just now, with a stop-watch, I determined that it takes me 3 seconds to
recite a 9-digit number to myself.  That includes reciting the words
'million' and 'thousand'.  I assume that reciting a 99-digit word
would take 33 seconds.  The 100-digit numbers and 99-digit numbers
are 99% of all the numbers you recite on the way there, so we don't have
to worry about the smaller numbers.

Therefore, it takes slightly more than .99 * 33 * 10^100 seconds to
count to a 100-digit number.  That's 1.04*10^94 years.  This is somewhat
more than two lifetimes.  It's even more than two lifetimes of the universe.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than the number of elementary
particles in the universe.


-- 
		-ed falk, sun microsystems
		 sun!falk, falk@sun.com
terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO.