Graham's Number

Anyone with arithmophobia (a fear of numbers), get away from here NOW, becuase the number I'm gonna talk about is the king of massive numbers. Of course, there's no limit to how big a number can be, but Graham's Number is possibly the biggest number ever to be used constructively (as in, it's actually been used to solve a mathematical problem). Before I show you Graham's Number though, think about this, as it'll help you to get a slight idea of how big a number this is...

Your brain is capable of storing hundreds of millions of GBs of data. All the information you've ever received since you were born is stored in your brain. Sure, you forget things, but something can happen which jogs your memory, and those forgotten memories seem to 'come back'- so they're always stored in your brain. Basically, your brain is pretty impressive right? Well, Graham's Number is so unimaginably massive that, if you tried to store it in your brain, your head would collapse into a black hole. No exaggerations, it's a fact. So, Graham's Number...

To understand this, you need to be familiar with arrow notation. Since there's no way I can use arrows here, I'll use dashes (/). Basically, 3^3 (3 cubed), can be written as 3 / 3 ('3 arrow 3'). Also, 3^3^3 (3 cubed cubed- 3^27) is written as 3 / / 3. Got the idea? Okay, here we go...

Start with 3 / / / / 3. This is already an insanely large number. It's so large that your calclator can't even process it. Try typing it in and it'll come up as an error. Lets call this number g1.

Now, lets do a similar thing, although, this time, there are gonna be LOADS more arrows. In fact, there are g1 number of arrows. O______o   Mmhmm, that massive number from before is how many arrow we now have: 3 / / /............................ / / / 3. This is g2.

It doesn't end there. g2 is unimaginably vast, though it's not even close to Graham's Number. We continue in this way... so g3 will have g2 number of arrows. This goes on all the way up to.........
g64, which has g63 number of arrows. <= Graham's Number. Pretty big eh?

You might be thinking, 'how the heck could that actually be a useful number?' Well, it's a pretty complicated problem that's related to Ramsey Theory and a Hypercube. I won't talk about it here- I'm sure Graham's Number is already enough to mess your brain up. If you're interested though, read up about it, it's pretty cool. If you like our blog, make sure you follow it; and tell all your friends about it. Admin H.