There is a petition on Facebook to define the number prefix for 1027 as “Hella.” Yeah, that’s a big number: a one followed by 27 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Coincidentally, the universe is estimated to be 0.88 hella-meters across. That’s hella big, almost… ;-)
To explore how big that really is, take a look at the Scale of the Universe (click “play” below the ad that appears).
Update. Okay, that wasn’t very clear. The number 1027 already has a name; it’s octillion. Hella would be the number prefix for an octillion units, like kilo is the prefix for a thousand units. In other works, an octillion meters would be 1 hella-meters. I edited the post to clarify.
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Hat tip: All Facebook.
So that implies the universe has an end….what does the end look like? What is beyond the end?
There are space monsters there (and a brick wall). ;-)
Is that similar to the wall between San Diego and Tijuana?
I must admit, any physics more esoteric than X-Lax leave my head spinning, but according to my very limited brain, if the universe is expanding, whoever gave you that number (10^27, or whatever) is already giving you outdated data, since any measurements that were taken to arrive at it are outdated by light-years.
You should follow the Scale of the Universe link. Other than being downright cool, it shows that the observable universe is smaller than the estimated size of the universe. That suggests to me that the size of the universe is based on something other than just a direct measurement using a hellameter yardstick.
I’m with you on not understanding this.
Well, if ‘they’ still think the universe is expanding, it has to be expanding into SOMETHING, even if that something is nothing, according to our understanding of the meaning of words. And, if it’s expanding into nothing, we have no way of knowing how big that nothingness is. Either that, or I don’t understand the meaning of those words according to the way cosmic physicists use them (which, of course, is extremely probable).
I think the physicists would disagree with you. Yeah, I don’t understand it, either. They talk about balloons and closed geometries and expanding faster than the speed of light (which makes no sense to me at all). Oh well… ;-)