Graham's number, named after its creator, Ronald Graham, is a very, very large number. It is in fact quite a lot larger than you or I can understand. It dwarfs numbers even as huge as googolplex (10^10^100). To see just how staggeringly big Graham's number is, take a look at the Numberphile video below.
See? It's pretty big. Graham's number has a lot of things going for it. It's often deemed as the largest number ever used in a mathematical problem. It's beautiful. It's also an incredible example of human creativity. Think about it: the sun existed before humanity, just as water or the element mercury. concepts, like one, two, or Graham's number, did not.
Imagine that. That humanity has capable of creating something as huge as that number. That it was capable of creating something even it couldn't fully comprehend. An idea like that, it's like making something so enormous out of nothing but our own thoughts. It's making something out of nothing but ourselves, and there's a very distinct beauty in that.
Graham's number is proof that we can create things greater than ourselves. We can make things that are bigger than the sum of our own parts. Ronald Graham created something so incredibly huge, that it became poetic. That's fantastic.
What are your thoughts on Graham's number and human creativity? Please share your ideas either on Facebook, Google+, or in the comments below. You should also feel free to email me at contemplationsblog@gmail.com. Thanks guys!
