Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Big numbers

Cosmic coincidence spotted : Nature News

The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10122. Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number — which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe — keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined1. This ‘coincidence’, he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes.
Seems odd that someone from a military college is making a name for himself in pointing out some big number co-incidences. Still, it's a good read.

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