What Is Beyond The Edge?

take a deep breath

there are about 56 stilian atoms in

every breath that you breathe in that's

a five followed by 22 zeros seven

octilian atoms make up your body that's

a seven followed by 27 zeros the whole

of planet Earth is composed of 100

quindicillion atoms or a one followed by

50 zeros in the entire observable

universe 46 billion light years across

there are thought to be up to 100

000 quadrillion vigintillion atoms or

one followed by 82 zeros

and the biggest number in the cosmos can

actually be arrived at by dividing the

total volume of the observable universe

by the smallest possible unit of volume

the Planck space

fighting everything we can we can see

into minuscule cubes we end up with 1

times 10 to the power of 185.

of those cubes

and yet that is not yet the biggest

number that humans have conceived

take for example the Goliath that is

tree three

as Antonio Padilla physicist at

Nottingham University puts it everything

you think you know

is dwarfed into nothing

welcome to the game of trees

you start with a colored seed which can

give rise to a tree whose branches and

in seeds that can Sprout their own trees

the goal is to make as many trees as

possible and there are two main rules

the first tree must contain one seed the

second a maximum of two seeds the third

a maximum of three seeds and so on at

each level the tree can contain less

than the maximum number but that maximum

is fixed to correspond to the level

you're at secondly the game ends and the

forest dies if you create a tree that

already exists within the forest so if

you repeat a pattern of colored seeds

that are linked together no matter how

far away it is in the forest it is game

over mathematicians have played this

game with different numbers of seed

colors tree one allows only a Single

Seed color and the forest dies at the

first tree the second seed you add is

necessarily a repeat of the first tree

two canasta Three Trees starting with

one color you make a tree that contains

two branches both of a second color the

next tree has just one branch by The

Next Step all possible combinations of

two colors have already been used and

you can't avoid building a tree that's

already been seen

but then you come to tree three

uses three colors

and tree three is different whereas the

previous forests died disappointingly

quickly a forest of three colored seeds

grows for an extraordinarily long time

mathematicians have proved the game must

end at some point but they've not been

able to count the trees it would take to

get there they've not been able to

because if they did

their brains would implode as Antonio

Padilla goes on to say in his

exploration of huge numbers for a while

you feel nothing untoward a string of

digits growing larger and larger in your

mind's eye and then it happens

just trying to imagine a number that

large is more than the human brain can

take trying to hold that number of

digits in your head would result in a

black hole forming from the sheer

quantity of information crammed inside

indeed faced with all the digits of tree

three scientists believe that the entire

observable universe will also suffer the

same fate

and so the solution to tree three is

without a doubt a mind-bendingly

enormous number but it is still a finite

number and so it is still smaller than

infinity

in fact however big the solution to tree

three is it is much much closer to zero

than it is to Infinity whereas counting

to the top of tree three may be a

foolish thing to attempt it isn't futile

because there is an end but Infinity has

no end

it just keeps going without reprieve for

every digit every object every anything

no matter how large there is another

waiting in line and another and another

so what happens when you keep going

is the universe itself infinite

and what would it mean to live in a

universe that never ended

take a deep breath

things

are about to get weird

foreign

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around 530 BC in the small town of

Croton in southern Italy a secretive

Band of Brothers Meats in a lamplet room

whispering in hushed tones while they

wait for their illustrious leader to

make his appearance

their conversation is impassioned and

reverential like that of any cult but

these men do not speak of gods their

concern is with the human soul with

geometry and above all else

with numbers

as their Master emerges from the Shadows

his disciples fall silent to better hear

his latest Doctrine for everything that

the great Pythagoras utters must be the

absolute truth

foreign

wasn't uncommon for Scholars and their

students to worship philosophical and

mathematical Concepts but the

pythagoreans took things to a new level

believing in the transmigration of the

human soul into the bodies of animals

followers were strictly forbidden to eat

meat as such the Cults were thought to

be among the first ever vegetarians

although this would have been a

challenge as they believed a small part

of a man's Soul was lost every time he

passed gas Pythagoras preached that the

only escape from this endless cycle of

death and animalistic reincarnation was

to seek higher knowledge of the universe

and so the pythagoreans built a Doctrine

around numbers in their reverence of the

rational the pythagoreans sought to

support their worldview by demonstrating

the utility of the counting numbers 1 2

3 4 and so on whereas on wieldy

ungraspable irrational numbers were evil

defined by darkness and maleficence in

the cosmic battle of light over darkness

that which was unlimited was to be

abhorred and avoided at all costs

but it was in Geometry that the

Pythagorean Doctrine began to crumble

the closer they looked the more they

realized that not everything could be

explained so simply when attempting to

calculate the length of a Square's

diagonal there was no neat and tidy

solution that equated it to a ratio of

two counting numbers the results was

always irrational always inelegant