What is the highest number known to man (before you reach infinity)?

Answer 1

There is no highest number know to man. This is because if someone says, for example, 1,000,000 is the highest number known to man, people would argue "but what about 1,000,001?"
For every number, you can go one higher.
The common argument is: "what about when you reach infinity?" Infinity is never reachable; therefore, the biggest number known to man is also unreachable, because, if infinity goes on forever, there is also a number a infinitessimally smaller than infinity, but not infinity. And seeing as infinity is unreachable, so is the largest number known to man.
It's a little difficult to explain, but if you imagine a car moving up a road, mile by mile, getting greater, as a number. This represents infinity, which is unreachable. There's a man chasing it, representing the largest number known to man, which never reaches the car (or infinity). As he runs along, he, as a number, becomes bigger, yet, never stops. This means that the largest number known to man is infinitessimally large.
If you understand, good. If not, then I'm rubbish at explaining things. Technically, the largest number would be infinity, although it really doesn't exist.

Answer 2

Infinity isn't a number and it can't be reached by any progress through numbers at any finite rate.

Infinity is a direction, not a place.

Large numbers can be imagined with any degree of bigness. Mathematicians write down big numbers as they happen to need them.

Mathematicians and scientists get to use numbers of any size for free because the company they work for paid to God the license fee to use them.

Answer 3

There is no highest number like if you were stupid enough to work out the radius of earth in millimetres, that would be a ridiculous number with a certain amount of zeros. Then to the expansion of the universe were it doesnt stop so the amount of numbers doesnt stop either.

So their cant be a high number unless you measure the largest known object by the smallest knwon unit, Then you will have the highest none expanding objects number.

Answer 4

Graham's Number.

Graham's number is an upper bound on a problem in Ramsey-Hunt theory, a section of combinatorics that is known for using unusually huge numbers.

To put Graham's Number in context, if every particle in the universe were a bottle of ink, and you had an infinite canvas, if you started writing out Graham's Number in decimal expansion, you'd run out of ink before you finished...

It was, at one time and I believe still is, listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest number for which a use has been found.

Oh, and just in case you care....

Specialists in Ramsey-Hunt theory believe the answer for which this behemoth of a number is an upper bound is....



I am NOT kidding....






6

Oh, brother...

Answer 5

The question is meaningless. Numbers are not 'known to man', they just are and for any number you can always add 1 ( or add 10000000 if you are in the mood ).
Here is a more interesting question, what is the first non special integer. The answer is infinity because if the number n is non special then it becomes special so you need to consider n+1 when in turn becomes special ....

Answer 6

the question itself has an infinate number of answers, for every guess at the highest number we can always add one and get a new highest number, and so on.

Answer 7

This is not really a very meaningful question since ANY number can be known. If there WERE such a highest number, let it be called "veryhigh". Now "veryhigh + 1" is even higher, and we "know" it! If you ask what the highest NAMED number is. Googol (note the spelling) was coined as the name of a large number, a one followed by a hundred zeros. Mathematician Edward Kasner said he got his nephew to invent the name. a MUCH bigger number is the "Googolplex", whihc is a one followed by a googol zeros. But you can keep going: a "googolplexillion" is a one followed by a googolplex zeros. Even bigger is "two googoleplexillion", and you can go higher again with "eighteen googolplexillion" and so on. Each number is "known", well-defined, and has its own name. Take ANY known number and you can immediately think of one much greater.

Answer 8

n = n + 1
-or-
1/0 (using the successive subtraction method of division)
-or-
10^10^10^10^10^10^10....
-or-
maybe 10^billion trillion gazillion mega google illion
-or-
The number of electrons that could fit into the universe?
-or-
The chances of, if two of all those electrons at opposite ends of the universe were selected, that via quantum mechanics they'd end up side-by-side in less than a nanosecond...

Answer 9

there is NO largest number in Maths!!Infinity is a concept that can b explained by eg : 10/10=1;10/1=10;10/0.1=100;10/0.001=10000....& so on
thus as denominator decreases quotient goes on bcoming larger so finally we've 10/0=10000000000000...................
to ANY invented 'large' number we CAN ADD 1 & GET NEXT no!!
Hence there is NO single largest number!

Answer 10

Trick question. You never can reach infinity, and man can write down any arbitrariliy large number at any time:

I.e. googleplex^googleplex

Someone else can top that at anytime by just saying
googleplex^googleplex + 1