On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Barry Rowlingson <b.rowling...@lancaster.ac.uk> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.ber...@gene.com> wrote: >> *** COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC *** >> >> Although machine precision (smallest numerical values that can be exactly >> represented) is important for numerical calculations, what is the smallest >> number that anyone has actually seen describing physical phenomena in >> science? I've seen values of ca. 1e-20 or so routinely used in physics on >> both size (e.g quarks) and time scales (lifetimes of evanescent particles). >> Beyond that about the smallest values I've seen are about 1e-40 or so >> seconds in discussions of Big Bang dynamics. Does anyone know of smaller >> ones (and those I've quoted might certainly be off somewhat). > > Hmmm smaller than 1e40... Well, I think I've seen the charge on an > electron given as much, much smaller than that...
Here's another: after ~4 years of graduate school, Citibank is starting to send me bank statements using these numbers to quantify the amount of $$ I have in the bank ... "Oh, I just earned $.02 interest? ... thanks for the email notification, Citibank!" >> Just curious. Hope this abuse of the list is not too egregious. Ignore if >> you think it is. > > It's Casual Friday. :-) -steve -- Steve Lianoglou Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | Weill Medical College of Cornell University Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
