Does the largest number ever counted have a value or a specific name?

Answer 1

Well since infinity is not a number but; then I guess the largest number will have to be infinity minus one

Answer 2

Graham's number is the largest number used in a serious mathematical proof. Moser is another large number. Skewes has several large numbers named after him, though not as large as the first two. The version assuming the Riemann Hypothesis is 'only' 10^(10^(10^34)), while the larger version not requiring the RH is 10^(10^(10^1000)).

The other two numbers are so large as to require their own notations (Conway chained arrow notation and Steinhaus polygon notation, respectively), since they could not be written in exponential notation on a piece of paper the size of the universe.

Responding to a critic: Were the universe a billion, billion times larger, no piece of paper fitting in it would suffice to write Graham's number in exponential notation. In fact, though the universe is expanding, the number of particles is staying roughly the same* so perhaps a better measure would be the particles. If each particle (quark, electron, photon, etc.) in the universe could contain 1 billion billion digits, there would not be enough particles in the universe to write he number of digits in Graham's number.

* It is well-known that the number of such particles in the universe is around 10^80. By all accounts the number must be in the wide range of 10^70 to 10^95.

Answer 3

The largest number ever seriously used in a mathematical proof (and thus has its own name) is Graham's number, which is far, far bigger than a googolplex.
Moser's number and Skewes' number are also bigger than a googolplex, although not nearly as big as Graham's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/graham%27s_...

Its value is 3 ↑^g(63) 3. (You will need to read the article if you dont understand this notation. It is so large that it cannot even be written in scientific notation!)

Of course, as there is no largest number, there probably will come a time when an even bigger number is named

Answer 4

Reminds me of childhood one-upmanship - Infinity plus 1!

Seriously though, numbers could go on indefinately - you can always add 1 more to something.

One of the answers here states that there is a number "so big it wouldn't fit on a piece of paper the size of the universe" - I thought the universe was either a) expanding or b) infinite (don't see how it could be both) so therefore either a) it will be big enough one day or b) is already big enough.
And anyway, you'd get writers cramp and run out of pencils!!

Answer 5

Numbers are infinite.

However, the highest number to actually be given a name, is a 'googol'. That is a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
A 'googolplex' is any number multiplied by a 'googol'.

Answer 6

We used to argue about this in elementary school and finally gave up when we realized that no matter what number you came up with, you could always add 1 to it and have a new higher number. So we quit.

Answer 7

it does not have a name-it's infinity

there is no end to numbers-there is no beginning,
just minus infinity-the largest number does not
exist

Answer 8

I think the largest number is called a googol...

Answer 9

Since we can not stop counting, we refer to any such number as infinite.

Answer 10

yes it does have a specific name it is called Zillion. does it have a value? It sound stupid even when you call it so I would say NO.