Carl Sagan on atoms, the googol, and the googolplex

[lampard554]

A better title would have been "Carl Sagan on atoms and the nature of infinity"

[shootingst4r1]

@lampard554 I think it should be "carl sagan fucking destroys an apple pie. and is then awesome."

[ImTotallyAwesome123]

Sophisticated comment: Carl Sagan, prophet of the cosmos...

Retarded comment: DURR, G00G3L 1S S0 4WS3M!!!

[Nicolea9000]

Googolplex is to Grahams number as an atom is to the universe. If you want to see a truly big number, search "a taste of infinity" on youtube. Grahams number will blow your mind

[murheed1]

this fuckin prick confuses you, it is 10 to the power of 1 followed by 100 zeros.

[murheed1]

googol = 10^100 which is 100000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­00000000000

googolplex = 10^100000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­00000000000000 which is if you try to calculate of any calculator it cant do it will give infinity as an answer

[DalekHunter1994]

@murheed1 My calculator just pukes up an error message.

[2the9s1]

As I started watching this video, I got hungry

[leahcimrac]

If you wish to make a pizza from sctach. You must first invent the stone oven.

[whiterottenrabbit]

Why does the audio lag, FFS?

[RYISCO]

Why didn't he choose, say, a meatloaf, or a slice of bread to cut? Hmmm. Anyhoo, Sagan was awesome - not even his lack of pie-cutting prowess can detract from his genius.

[Barkeroni]

If you were ever a guest at Carl Sagans house for dinner, you probably didnt eat til midnight.

[chukaz1]

infinity=growth

[FreakyKing2]

My favorite Atheist and scientist of all time.

[TanoBrati]

"Matter is composed, chiefly, of nothing." We're all empty space.

[RMJ1984]

Now im hungry, wonderful. GIEF APPLEPIE!,

[yngvai777]

You know you're a pothead when you're thinking of this stuff while eating an apple pie :p Sagan was a genius.

[GammahooX]

Well if there are only 10^80 particles in the universe, have fun representing a number with 10^100 digits. :P

[frankvdg]

@GammahooX well you could represent multiple digits within each atom, I guess

[101mythbusters]

MIIIIIIIINNNNDDDD FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!

[RevAlexDubstep]

I remember watching this my freshman year in high school. Shit blew my mind. He inspired my love of science.

[ShAdOwPuNk1995]

Couldn't even get past the beginning... BORING!!

[atomicwave]

Carl Sagan... amazing astrophysicist, brilliant man, a great educator and entertainer, one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen...... Sucks at cutting pie.

[kilroy227]

I wonder what poor bastard had to write out all those zeros...

[2guyspluseacamera]

Hey Carl. Are gonna eat that?

[seinfan9]

The set of all real numbers contains an actual infinite amount of elements.

The set of all integers contains an actual infinite amount of elements.

The set of all integers is a proper subset of the set of all real numbers.

The set of all integers has less elements than the set of all real numbers.

Therefore, an actual infinite is not equal to an actual infinite.

We have to accept that this contradiction actually exists.

[Chewy427]

@seinfan9 the set of all real numbers is uncountably infinite, whereas the integers are countably infinite.

[fire314]

@seinfan9 I think you're confused. Stating that one set of "actual infinity" is less than another shows a complete misunderstanding of the concept of infinity. Infinity is not a number that can be quantified. The fact that you even used the word "less" when comparing two infinities shows a complete misunderstanding of the concept. You're too used to working with finite sets it seems! The contradiction you elude to does not exist, just flawed thinking and logic on your behalf!

[seinfan9]

@fire314 Explain aleph numbers to me, then.

[Jebus495]

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Google spelled it wrong? xD

[2the9s1]

@Jebus495 :D

[TheLuckySaGe]

Carl Sagan: "Hey can you do me a favor and write down a number on this toilet paper roll"

Person: "Sure no problem"

Carl Sagan: "Thanks, the number is googolplex"

Person: "-_-"

[AndreasZimmerman]

So, Carl was obviously not a pastry chef.

[jatinderpalahuja]

your stupidity is .... googol plex ....

[leahcimrac]

My penis is a googol.

[Ryalnotch]

Carl Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in space and natural sciences but horrible at cutting pie :)

[vancouvermild]

@Ryalnotch

That's toooooo funny! I was thinking the same thing, LOL! He is one hell of a master communicator, though!

[Cheshirecat55]

I can fucking listen to him speak for days on end.

[mudchair16]

He look so noble sitting there at the start.

[MrTimothytim]

POOR PIE!

[Exarian]

I think I figured out a good way to describe Sagan: He is the Fred Rogers of science. no really, he is surprisingly similar in mannerisms when you think about it.

[Throwweight]

"Crumbly . . . . but good." If the man spoke at an ordinary pace and left out the theatrics this would be over in 2 minutes. (You can see him slavishly reading the teleprompter, especially @2:10-2:45.)

[duramu]

@Throwweight As rare as it is in this day and age, some people actually think about and choose their words carefully before speaking them. While it's entirely possible that he used a teleprompter during the recording of his show; listening to any number of his interviews will show you the mannerisms of his speech were the same when no teleprompter could possibly have been available.

[Throwweight]

@duramu You are right, of course. I have no problem taking one's time to get words and ideas right. Were it only that people were more careful in choosing their words. I will suggest that Sagan's idiomatic parlance had a dramatic quality that helped make him famous as a media personality. The slow, "behold, my words are wise " pace is part of his persona. Sill, the pace is very slow--especially for a citizen of NYS--and it is debatable whether it is better for communication. "Crumbly . . .

[duramu]

@Throwweight Ah, I see what you mean. I suppose apple pie doesn't normally invoke complex thought processes. heh

[Throwweight]

Did he say eighty before the voice over?

[GRAVEROTT]

My brain just exploded. Fuck

[ANGELO13111]

if you wish to make an apple pie from sctatch, you must first, invent the universe.

FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU­UUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Bullman85]

Crumbly but good.

[Bacopa68]

Dreaming of Cosmos kept me from dying when I was a kid.

[neurastenia1000]

I found this video on google!

[GroovingPict]

it is quite obvious he had to overdub the correct number of successive cuts to get to an atom (the "90" is obviously dubbed in); but what number is he originally saying in the video? 80? I cant really read it from his lips.

[Trudde1337]

I'm about to bake raps from scratch like Carl Sagan!

Umm, that was Hawk-ward.

[consolemaster]

10^26 = Avagodro Number

[FusedPube]

@consolemaster Wrong.... Avogadro's number = 6.022x10^23.

[youdontknowxpand]

@consolemaster Lol, way too much...

[Wittgensteinism]

i love that at 1:00 you hear Sagan dub over himself the up-to-date figure of "90" successive cuts. lol

What a damn stickler for facts

[SovereignStatesman]

Sagan was SUCH a pinko during the Cold War... like most specialists in a field, he is so focused in one area that he sounds brilliant in his area of expertise, but he's so convinced of his overall brilliance that he's totally full of shit when talking outside of it.

[GroovingPict]

@SovereignStatesman there's no such thing as "outside Sagan's area of expertise"...

[SovereignStatesman]

@GroovingPict

Yeah, that's what I thought once too LOL

[SovereignStatesman]

That "Googol" thing is SO stupid.. the correct term is "10 TRITITILLION."

Why not ask an infant, they'll call it a "goo-goo ga-ga."

[joocrazyman455]

I just realised this was my 666'th youtube favorite

LOLWATTTTTTTTTT

[DeftCrowMk3]

@karite36 By definition, multiplying countable infinity with a number larger than one(including infinity) still results in countable infinity. (n*∞ = (n+1)*∞ = ∞^n = ∞^(n+1) = ∞, so lim(n->∞)(∞^n) = ∞^∞= ∞). Since 10^∞ is not larger than ∞^∞ = ∞, it's not larger than infinity.

There are still larger infinities. Simply put, that number is [surpassed] by the total number of irrational numbers because you can't make a one-on-one pairing between every rational number and every irrational number.

[karite36]

But is infinity larger than, say, 1 followed by an infinite amount of zeroes?

[bruenor82]

@karite36 yes



[karite36]

@bruenor82 But that number is still infinite. Paradoxical. On another note, if you think, any number that's not known is infinite, it is, not finite, or known. To you, my age is in-finite. Food for thought.

[bruenor82]

@karite36 Infinite means immeasurable, not unknown. Your age is still with in the limits of the human ability to conceive and measure time. 1 followed by an infinite number of zeroes shall be made finite by placing a decimal anywhere within that number. You cannot put a decimal in infinity. ;-)

[karite36]

@bruenor82 Ah, a logical answer, I like that. No further questions. Well played.

[ChronicDNA]

IT'S NOT HIS FAULT!the pie was crumbly

[ChronicDNA]

what, Exactly, does he mean by accesable universe

[someguyhunter]

@ChronicDNA im assuming its how far human technology has detected out into space. we need light to see an image from space so its pretty much all the light we can access from earth.

[ExNecro]

am i the only one that thinks this guys sounds like Agent Smith from the matrix.

i swear he does.

<.< i swear.

[CamiloSanchez1979]

It's so weird to hear the word googol and googol plex and to think of a search engine and its headquarters correspondingly

[ADHR26]

@CamiloSanchez1979 Where do you think google got its name? 

[choobie12]

This guy better watch out, he's asking for his brain to be burned really bad.

[TheJimzhe842]

i really like osmos musi

[DeftCrowMk3]

Ninety successive cuts, the order of 2^90, or about 10^27.

[snarkyscuffary]

Carl's hair is swooshy @_@

[jmitterii2]

Was hoping he'd mention quarks and pions, and maybe what he thinks that means to the macro scale if anything.

[OhReallyNoWai]

Oh man his cutting skills were just terrible lol! Luckily he was much better at more important matters. What a great man he was... nature had collected the best available star stuff and used it for one man.

[darkling9109]

Of all the things Carl was good at, cutting pies doesn't seem to be one.

[aries066]

That pie is a disaster

[mout12]

Many people justify the existence of the universe by saying that the universe is infinitely old. So if the universe is infinity days old today, then tomorrow it must be inifinity + 1 days old.  It makes perfect sense.

[ashish612]

Thank god for standard form

[buried2]

1:02

wat

[bananaoctopus]

He kinda talks/acts like agent smith.

[demoguy08]

@bananaoctopus Actually, it's the opposite - agent Smith talks like Carl Sagan!

[bsebi777]

@bananaoctopus That's not a coincidence. Agent Smith is modelled on him.

watch?v=BlpyGhABXRA

[Lukester132]

Atoms are simple things, they are made of energy

[hanspanzer]

@Lukester132

and whats energy made off? and so on... ;)

[metaltyphoon]

his...... hairrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr­rrrrrrrr



[Killacats119]

To the 1 person who disliked Carl Sagan.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

God gave me 5 fingers

And the middle on is for you!

[demoguy08]

@Killacats119 Sagan wouldn't have approved of you giving him the finger. If we can't handle people that think differently, we're no better than, say, religious fundamentalists.

[Killacats119]

@demoguy08 You have a good point there.

[DrownedinDreams]

1 person does not like apple pies.

[RaveNeveRaven]

Carl Sagan.. Y U MAKE MY BRAIN HURT??

[lordbalron]

I feel bad for the intern who had to write out all of those 0's.

[RMJ1984]

CARL SAGAN DONT PLAY WITH THE FOOD! :D

[rizzdrums4life]

really i'm wrong am i?

and what are you basing your argument upon?

[rizzdrums4life]

you could easily write out a googolplex, it would fit in the universe, as the universe is basically 100% empty space.

[ultramaster123]

@rizzdrums4life

Wrong.

[rizzdrums4life]

@ultramaster123 and how is that?

explain?

[strategery101]

@rizzdrums4life OK, get writing!!!

[rizzdrums4life]

@strategery101

so the universe is 93 billion light years in diameter.

work that out as a distance and you get a massive amount in metres.

as the universe all originated from one position, assuming everything is moving away from that point, the universe is a sphere.

using the formula for the volume of a sphere, [4(pi) times R power 3]/ 3 the volume of the universe is around 10 time 10 to the 82 (or something about that)

[strategery101]

@rizzdrums4life I was just joking man. But, the big bang took place about 14.7 billion years ago, therefore the diameter of the known universe would be 14.7 billion light years across. Not 93 billion light years.

[rizzdrums4life]

@strategery101

hah i know man,

yeah that is what i originally thought however all research has showed on average that is is indeed 93.

works out at about 46 billion light years radius.

[ArtistryofDebauchery]

! Lol I started laughing my head off when he began to unroll the googolplex paper hahaa.

[JohnMarsto2011]

mastondonplex to the power mastondonplex = GYRONPLEX!!!!!

[HorusOsirisRa]

What's the smallest increment of time( if there is such a thing?)?

[blahdelablah]

@HorusOsirisRa

There isn't really a smallest increment of time, as you can always imagine something smaller. However, the smallest increment of time (that I know of) that is used in physics is Planck time. Wikipedia sums it up as follows: " It is the time required for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of 1 Planck length." Next question is probably what is the Planck length measurement, I'll leave finding out the answer up to you. Hope this message answered your question satisfactorily.

[RJL738]

There is also a number called Googoldecaplex, expressed 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^­100 being 11 levels of exponent. But what if there was a number like Googolcentiplex being 101 exponent levels, or Googolmilliplex being 1,001. A number like Googolcentiplex would need a new notation maybe 10^(101) or Googolterraplex 10^(1,000,000,000,001). A number like this 10^(1,000,000,000,000,000) would need to be notated 10^(10(15) and 10^(10(1,000,000,000,000,000,0­00,000) notated 10^(10(10-27).

[thewisefool]

A tremendous intellect but a terrible slicer of apple pies.

[ah4fecksake]

@thewisefool hahaha was down in the dumps until I read that.You made me laugh.....

[Retardretroguy]

@thewisefool Well, he prefers special brownies

[SovereignStatesman]

@thewisefool

you're splitting hairs...

[TiminPhoenix]

@thewisefool You are a genius as well.

[niightwolf]

i can smell the apple pie from here

[FusedPube]

Out of curiosity I did the math, and it's true. Given the fact that a peice of paper is about 0.0001m thick, imagine tiny cubes of paper, 0.0001m in all 3 dimensions. Now imagine that each of these cubes has a zero written on its face. In order to write out a googol plex, you need a googol of these cubes. You can only fit 2.9x10^90 of these cubes in he known universe (r ≈ 1.37x10^10 light years), meaning you would need 10 billion known universes to fit a googol zeros of this size! Amazing!

[Lioyd1rving]

@FusedPube Well, that's kind of obvious; a googolplex is more than the number of atoms in the universe (if I'm not mistaken) and the number "0" written on a piece of paper is a heck of a lot bigger than an atom... :v

[FusedPube]

@Lioyd1rving You're not taking into account that the vast majority of the universe is not occupied by atoms; it is mostly empty space. It's not nearly as clear-cut and obvious as you might think. For argument's sake, the volume of the known universe ≈ 9.11 x 10^78 m^3, and the volume of a single hydrogen atom ≈ 6.23 x 10^-31 m^3, meaning you can actually fit 1.46 x 10^109 hydrogen atoms in the known universe if we imagine them as cubes and arrange these cubes edge to edge....

[FusedPube]

@Lioyd1rving (part 2) This, as you must've noticed is much, much more than a googol. Hydrogen atoms are actually spheres however, and you can fit many more than this figure within the universe (math I'm not willing to do). Now, imagine you could print a zero on the face of each atom. You could obviously fit a googol in the universe if written in this fashion. In fact, you could write out 1.46 x 10^9 googols in this way and fit them inside the known universe.

[FusedPube]

@Lioyd1rving (part 3) However, our dear Carl spoke of writing a googolplex on paper in a traditional sense, and I offered up the smallest conceivable paper googolplex, and through math proved him correct, but not by as astonishing a margin as you were imagining it to be.

-note-

replace googol in the last two sentences of part 2 with googolplex

[FusedPube]

@Lioyd1rving Actually after thinking about it for a sec, the math I used only works for volume displacement, which doesn't really apply here. I meant to figure for cube-rounded volume. Using the correct means, you can fit 7.64 x 10^108 H atoms in the known universe, which is about half as many as previously stated.

[Lioyd1rving]

@FusedPube Shit, I was being an idiot. Sure the NUMBER is bigger, but I remembered it as the number of ZEROES being bigger than the total amount of atoms etc. etc. :x

[FusedPube]

@Lioyd1rving it's all good bro. I love this kinda shit.

[fathappymonkey]

thats funny how they changed the audio at 1:02

[geandily]

"Woah, you used to work for Carl Sagan?? That must have been amazing! A life changing experience!"

"Yeahhhh um, no.. he told me to start writing a googolplex... End of the day he told me it couldn't be done! Worst job of my life."

[SovereignStatesman]

@geandily

It's easy: (10^100)^100

There's your googolplex!

(Zero is MY hero!)

[Trannsvaal]

@geandily "not to mention the day he asked me to bake an apple pie...."

[deeppurple28]

Pay attention children you just learned more in 7 minutes and 49 seconds than you would in 1 whole year of college!

[lotteein420]

@deeppurple28 he pronounces googol like an ape

[Trinitrotolaissance]

Lets imagine that we are perfectly flat, I mean ab-so-lute-ly flat. And that we live, appropriately enough, in a flatland.

Would you go bonkers?!

[MrMasterMan007]

Keep playing 1:02, and look at his mouth, does anyone think it sort of looks like he said eight or something?, and also, anyone think the audio sounds a little weird as if carl was wrong the first time, and while making this they quickly muted the audio for a second, and reorded him saying 90?

Just something i noticed.

[Loriixoxo]

@MrMasterMan007 Yeah, I had to watch it three times before I saw what you meant; it sort of looks like that, but only sort of.

[tttooommm123]

Crumbly... but... Good.

[DeepAbsentia]

"..bits of moving fluff."

Come on, thats perfect.

[Alkinoos7]

We miss you Carl Sagan! I wish you were here! Humanity needs people like you and every time one of you dies, humanity goes many steps back!

[elliottchrist]

I'm seeing this in the age of the Bill O'Reilly "How'd the moon get there?" video. How sorely we need people like Sagan - not to mention Attenborough, Nye, De Grasse Tyson, et al - who could communicate and enlighten a culture that is now so chauvinistically illiterate when it comes to matters of science.

[Blayzn18]

@elliottchrist Check out Wonders of the Solar System and now Wonders of the Universe on BBC. Prof. Brian Cox does a good job bringing back the wonder of Science.

[tompaste]

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"

This is gonna be good.

[Electroabel]

Actually, I got a thought that I had the idea that why the website google is called "google".....we all know the binary system is made by infinity 1's and infinite 0's, all these especies of matter, as we called "window" is made by these two whole numbers; the whole idea of the name"google" is a reflexion of these facts of infinity binary system; infinity data; google has infinity data. which is the message behind the name.

[FusedPube]

@Electroabel what?

[Electroabel]

@FusedPube what what?

[Electroabel]

THIS IS THE BEST LESSON I EVER HAD IN MY WHOLE LIFE

[TakesTwoToTango]

"The answer is: about 90 successive cuts"

I feel sorry for his grad students :(

[oqardZ]

@TakesTwoToTango Have you actually calculated how much is 2 to the power of 90? No? I thought so. He might not be exact, but he is close enough for purpose of an educational / science-popularization series.

[snookerjam]

oh my dear sagan u were brilliant...loved the opening "if u want to make a pai from the beginning u have to invent the universe" ...what a mind and he seemed so nice.

[bigphatfro]

I knew by the classical music playing while Carl Sagan was being served pie, this was going to be a good video!

[mrsmith800]

Crumbleee....but good!

[ricerice566]

"Bitches, you best be amazed by my pre-sliced apple pie", laughs Carl Sagan....

[MrPeterFinland]

Long live science! Instead of going to church or mosque, people should watching this and learning what's really going on.

[samyooljackson]

Imagine if he was a judge on Top Chef.

[dsriggs]

...can't I just make one with apples & pastry? :(

[leksious]

His examples are so inspiring! What If there were two parallel perfect and infinite mirrors and 2D universe was born between, everything that ever was would have been recorded on each mirror and all the information would be stored on them. Looking at those mirrors would be like zooming on fractals.. Sagan´s and Feynman´s teachings are something i could listen to all day every day.

[mindnumber9]

8 is the symbol of infinity but Nine is eternity :P

[mindnumber9]

the first number on that gigantically long tape should be a Nine.

[mindnumber9]

and why would anyone use the number ONE as the largest? that's ridiculous. everybody knows that NINE is the largest number.

[parisruiz1]

NOW, THAT IS ONE PERSON WHO THINKS ABOUT NUMBERS AAAAAAA LOT!!!! NICE.

[MrPeterFinland]

@mindnumber9 and zero is even less, instead of zeros he should have written nines