How big is 10^80?

By the way, 10^80 is approximately the number of particles in the universe: protons, electrons, photons, etc. (If this estimate is a factor of 10 too small due to "dark matter", what would the revised estimate be?)

For comparison, can you get a rough estimate of how many positions are possible in chess? What does this imply about devising the following strategy for playing chess: make a brute-force list of all possible chess positions, and what the best possible move to make is. Then when playing a game, just consult your list for each move!

Of course, larger numbers may still be of very real interest, even though they don't correspond to counting or measuring anything: 200-digit numbers are routinely used to encrypt data. Saying that the magnitude of a 200-digit number is "astronomical" is really an injustice.

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