What Is the Biggest Number?

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I guess this comes back to the idea of whether any number exists, right? And sometimes, which is a whole new philosophical debate. There's all these different ways about thinking about whether a number exists. But I think it's true that certain numbers, there is sort of maybe not Graham's number,. Because we've thought about Graham's number, it's been conceived of. If you think of the numbers that are just in and aroundGraham's number, that are maybe just out there, you know, it's just somewhere around it doesn't matter, right? No one's ever going to think of that number. It's just some kind of silly trick with sort of numerology a

It’s a big universe we live in, so it comes as no surprise that big numbers are needed to describe it. There are roughly 10^22 stars in the observable universe, and about 10^88 particles altogether. But these numbers are nothing compared to some of the truly ginormous quantities that mathematicians have found to talk about, with inscrutable names like Graham’s Number and TREE(3). Could such immense numbers have any meaningful relationship with the physical world? In his recent book Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, theoretical physicist Antonio Padilla explores both our actual universe and the abstract world of immense numbers, and finds surprising connections between them.

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Antonio (Tony) Padilla received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Durham. He is currently a Royal Society Research Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. He is a frequent contributor to the YouTube series Sixty Symbols and Numberphile.

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