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What Is the Largest Number? [Video]

This is not a trick question

Credit: Pixabay

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


We all know that a billion is a lot and a trillion is a lot more, but what do you call numbers that are even bigger? A Googol is bigger: it's 10 to the hundredth power—but it's not the biggest. In this  well-researched 19 minute film, master explainer Sharkee takes us through ever larger numbers. 

He applies three rules. The largest number cannot be a number plus 1. The number must be useful in some way. And infinity doesn’t count, because it isn't actually a number.


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Eliene Augenbraun is a multimedia science producer, formerly Nature Research's Multimedia Managing Editor and Scientific American's senior video producer. Before that, she founded and ran ScienCentral, an award-winning news service providing ABC and NBC with science news stories. She has a PhD in Biology.

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