What is the very last number?

Question

Is there one?

Answer 1

The largest number catalogued is Graham`s number which is an upper bound, as is the next lowest cataogued number, Skewes number. The next lowest number is F23471 which is the largest known composite Fermat number and has 10^7000 digits and is larger than a gigaplex.
Infinity can never be labelled as it is merely a concept that helps explain the unknown and division by zero.

Answer 2

The concept of 'Number' allows us to 'count' items etc and group items into the groups, sets, families etc...

but as already discussed there is no "Last Number"; as if you have a very large quantity and add another to them you have surpassed the number you already referred to

Infinity DOES NOTgrow

Infinity is NOT "getting larger", it is already fully formed.

Sometimes people (including me) say it "goes on and on" which sounds like it is growing somehow. But infinity does not do anything, it just is.

Infinity is NOT a real number
Infinity is not a real number, it is an idea. An idea of something without an end.

Infinity CANNOT be measured.

Even these faraway galaxies can't compete with infinity.


Infinity is simple

Yes! It is actually simpler than things which do have an end. Because if something has an end, you have to define where that end is.

Example: a "Line" has infinite length- it goes in both directions without an end.
If it does have an end it is either a Ray (one end) or a Line Segment (two ends).

Big Numbers

There are some really impressively big numbers.

A Googol is 1 followed by one hundred zeros (10 to power of 100) :


10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

A Googol is already bigger than the number of elementary particles in the known Universe, but then there is the Googolplex. It is 1 followed by Googol zeros. I can't even write down the number, becuase there is not enough matter in the universe to form all the zeros:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,... etc (Googol number of Zeros)

And there are even larger numbers that need to use "Power Towers" to write them down.

Answer 3

There is no such thing as a highest possible number. No matter what number you have, there is always a larger one. (For example, you could always add 1 to your number to get a larger number).
What you are intending to ask is "what is the largest number that anyone has ever decided to give a specific name to?" It is very important to understand that this is a completely different question from the one you asked, because it is a question about human culture not about mathematics.

The largest number that has a commonly-known specific name is a "googleplex", which is a 1 followed by a googol zeros, where a "googol" is (a 1 followed by 100 zeros).

However, there would be nothing stopping you from giving a special name to a still larger number (such as a googleplex plus 1), and then that would become the largest named number once the term became commonly known.

In summary, then: the mathematical question "what is the highest possible number" has no answer, because there is no such thing. But the sociological question "what is the largest number that anyone has ever decided to give a specific name to, a name which has become commonly known" is, for now, a "googleplex" (until someone decides to coin a phrase for a still larger number and it catches on and becomes commonly known).

Answer 4

When I was 5 years old, my best friend and I realized and effectively proved that there was no "very last number." You should be able to do that for yourself.

Live long and prosper.

Answer 5

Number 14 - the loose forward. (There's no number 13 normally at StHelens).

Answer 6

To infinity is wrong it is impossibe to make a number up for it.
Because no one would or has ever counted to it.
The highest i have ever heard myself is a Trillion which i believe is a billion billion .
There is no use i think you will find for any number after that.
Baz

Answer 7

Number is to infinity there is no last number.

Answer 8

Its the one after the penultimate number.

Answer 9

Well it could be the very last number uttered by the very last human before they die. So choose one, you could be right:O)

Answer 10

There is no last one because if x is the biggest one
x+1 is a bigger one.