MATHEMATICIANS DISCOVER LARGEST NUMBER

[Harmonica Bear]

PALO ALTO, CA - An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value "by a totally mindblowning amount." Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a "stimulus," could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.

"Unlike previous large numbers like the Googleplex or the Bazillionty, the Stimulus has no static numerical definition," said Xiao. "It keeps growing and growing, compounding factorially, eating up all zeros in its path. It moves freely across Cartesian dimensions and has the power to make any other number irrational."

Jean-Luc Brossard, a researcher with the European consortium CERN, said the number is so staggeringly large that it is difficult to for even mathematicians to grasp, let alone lay people.

"The number itself is incomprehensible by human minds, and can only be theoretically understood in a fractional parallel universe which we refer to as the DC dimension," said Brossard. "The best way to understand a stimulus is to imagine a dollar sign followed by a packed string of hexidecimal nanodigits, wound into a triple helix, woven into a dodecahedron, and stacked on top of one another. Now imagine you were a black hole on the far edge of the universe, trying to escape the stimulus at 30 times the speed of light. The stimulus would still catch up to you and ram your black hole with such furious, repeated force that it would cause your entire reality itself to collapse."

Xiao said the team discovered the number with the help of an international network of 24 nitrogen-cooled Cray Ultracluster supercomputers, the CERN particle accelerator, and "three pounds of Humboldt County Chronic."

"The exciting news is that with more powerful computers and drugs, we believe we are on the verge of discovering an even larger number, which we refer to as a 'stimulusconferencebill,'" said Xiao.

[dberl09]

Huh? I think i need a dictionary or a thesarus. Interesting

[chub]

LOL

[CALVINIST]

I think I experienced the stimulus/black hole thing as I was tripping on acid.

[JeffB]

I could read this post (stimulus + 1) times and it still wouldn't make sense. Ok I was a little slow and didn't read all the way to the end.

[Wanderer]

LMAO!

Is this out of the Onion?

[Steve Foss]

It looked like an Onion piece to me, too.

[pinkfloyd4ever]

yes reads like an onion story, but funny and confusing all the same

[mrklean]

i am so glad people spend money on junk like this

[TurnUpTheFishing]

"The best way to understand a stimulus is to imagine a dollar sign followed by a packed string of hexidecimal nanodigits, wound into a triple helix, woven into a dodecahedron, and stacked on top of one another. Now imagine you were a black hole on the far edge of the universe, trying to escape the stimulus at 30 times the speed of light. The stimulus would still catch up to you and ram your black hole with such furious, repeated force that it would cause your entire reality itself to collapse."

Oh, now it makes sense!

[Chef]

ROFLMFO...

[pinkfloyd4ever]

"The exciting news is that with more powerful computers and drugs, we believe we are on the verge of discovering an even larger number, which we refer to as a 'stimulusconferencebill,'" said Xiao.

More powerful computers? This is how Terminator started, don't say I didn't warn you and why do the computers need drugs?

[snoozebutton]

Is that number bigger than "a whole (poor word usage) load?"

[MN Shutterbug]

And how will this enrich our lives?

[mrfish1991]

"three pounds of Humboldt County Chronic."

dang thats a lot of w33d

[lovebigbluegills]

I did some figuring the other day, and still can't get my head around the idea of a trillion.

Here's a couple things I came up with (by my calculations, which I'm pretty sure are correct).

-1 trillion seconds ago was ~31,700 years ago.

-Using 250 bills/inch stacked, 1 trillion dollars of 100 dollar bills would be a stack ~631 miles high.

[redseal]

i just added 1 to that number.... now i have found the largest number ever...lol