avogadro's number Archives - Math and Multimedia

The Uses of Large Numbers

April 10, 2013 GB High School Mathematics

Large numbers are used mostly used in astronomy and cosmology. According to the Big Bang Model, the universe is estimated to be $4.3 \times 10^{17}$ seconds old, the observable universe is $8.8 \times 10^{26}$ meters, and it contains $5 \times 10^{22}$ stars.

In computing, if a hacker attempts to open a computer with up to a 40-character password, we should really wish him luck. Even though he may create a program that would display 1 billion strings per second indefinitely, it would take him $2 \times 10^{87}$ seconds or about $6 \times 10^{79}$ years to complete all the combinations. That is way, way older than the universe which is only about 13.7 billion years old. » Read more

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