mindblow

Space is cold. Or is it? Like with many other things the correct answer is: it depends.

On average the space is very cold, around 3 Kelvins (that's -270 degrees Celsius!). When there aren't any radiation/heat sources nearby the background radiation of the universe is the only thing keeping that temperature above the absolute zero.

But that's far away, in the interstellar space where there is nothing nearby. Far out from our reach. What about the space closer to us? Is it that cold also in the orbit of our planet?

Past few days I have tried to show you some big numbers and math to go even bigger. It's pretty much all the preparation I could give before getting into the actual topic the Graham's number.

Before we start I would like to reiterate a few things: our insanely huge number that expands all of the multiverse, the Knuth's up-arrow notation and how adding just a single arrow launces the number to a completely new magnitudes. And finally the fact that mere 3↑↑↑↑3 is already much bigger than that multiverse-spanning meganumber.

Graham's number is big. So big that it's hard to even grasp how big it actually is. So maybe it's better to start with some "smaller" numbers first to truly realize the magnitude of such numbers.

As a kid thousand things was already a lot and million was the biggest thing ever. Coming up with even bigger numbers always involved just adding more zeroes to the end of the numbers. Million millions and so forth.

I have to admit I got it all wrong in the past. All the arguments that we might be living inside a simulation. The thing is not to explain why we are here or what created the universe. That still wouldn't make any sense.

But the whole point is the so called ancestor simulation scenario. The assumption is that we (or the ones running the simulation to be more exact) at some point reached the point where running such simulation is computationally possible. Assuming the human level curiosity such computational power would eventually be used to run some simulations of the past.