On the drive home, I got to thinking some more about the 100 thing challenge. I realized once more how difficult the human mind finds it to grapple with non linear relationships. While it might prove nearly impossible to live with no more than 100 possessions, it might be do-able with perhaps 300, and we might be hard pressed to list 1000. We might not even know anyone with 2000 possessions.
I remembered an article that tried to explain how big a sum $1 Billion really is; even if you could spend $1000 per day, the sum would last you 3000 years. We tend to think of a billion as just a large sum, but 3000 years puts it in a completely different orbit.
Which brings me to the title of this piece, the Googol, which is a number written as a 1 followed by 100 zeros. 1 *10^100 in scientific notation if it pleases you. It is difficult to truly wrap ones head around how big this number really is.
If you check this article or this one, you will see that the total number of atoms in the known observable universe is between 10^78 and 10^82.
The googol, then, is a perfectly useless number in practical terms. Interesting how the human mind can make up abstractions without really 'getting' them.
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