For all you math buffs out there.
 

I need some help. I have a distance that I would like converted into either a unit of measure or an imaginable distance. Something I can actually show to other people and make them understand. I have tried converting the distance into miles, light years, astronomical units and gigaparsecs, but it's still too large for me to repeat to anyone in a normal context.

Here is the number: 2.2e+99 feet

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thank you,
Feign

Does this have something to do with the Kessel Run? :)

Easy... it's 7e82 light years.

I'd recommend finding a really really huge object (like the estimated size of the universe). Let them get a good concept of that in their head... and then say "And that object is about 0.00...0001% the size of 2.2e99 feet."

What are you talking about that's larger than the universe, if you don't mind me asking?

I work in Civil Engineering, using AutoCAD software to design residential developments, shopping centers, roads, etc.... Someone from my office placed an object 2.20E+99 feet away from a site I was designing on the computer and caused all kinds of havoc when they zoomed out to the extents of the drawing file and couldn't see anything on the screen. Theoretically, the space we work in on the computer screen is infinite.

Thanks for your reply.

That sounds like a good start. Is that file "broken" now? :)

That sounds like a devious April Fool's Day prank. So wrong. And yet, hilarious. :lol:

I'm sure you're not laughing though.

to try and help someone visualize such a HUGE number,
id put it this way,


if i were to stack a whole bunch of 2mm thick pennies on top of one another, 2e64 pennies* would give me a pile of pennies beyond the moon (400 000 km away) and the sun (150 million km away), which would in fact reach the nearest star "Proxima Centauri" (which is about 4 light years away). so obviously, e99 would be a little further than that


1km = 3280feet



* (i use 64 instead of 99 because 2e64 is actually a documented distance i found)

does that make sense? :hmm:

Whoa... I haven't used CAD since high school. And take it from me, how far away things become is nothing to how small you can mke objects. I saw the latest version of HG Welles' The Time Machine (was rather disappointed) and created my own in there. The viewing space can only go to a certain size... but I found a back door around that. The computer restarted! No joke, I was designing that thing for months... and it got so detailed that the computers didn't have enough memory to create a picture for the screens.