There is a story (apocryphal?) about Fred Hoyle, many years ago, having come to the close of a public lecture about his work in Cosmology (I seem to recall that it was to the British Astronomical Association, a society of amateur astronomers, and therefore knowledgeable). He was taking questions.
A member of the audience asked (words to the effect): Can Professor Hoyle explain the reasons why he adopted the value 10^1000 [or similar] for the [X] constant? At which Hoyle grinned, and replied "ten to the thousand, ten to the two thousand, ten to the three thousand, what difference does it make?" Ted. On 31-Mar-10 17:45:54, Dimitri Liakhovitski wrote: > I spoke with a theoretical physicist and he said he encountered > 10^-120. > Has something to do with attempts to describe/explain the universe... > Dimitri > > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Steve Lianoglou > <mailinglist.honey...@gmail.com> wrote: >> 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. >> > > > > -- > Dimitri Liakhovitski > Ninah.com > dimitri.liakhovit...@ninah.com > > ______________________________________________ > 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-Mar-10 Time: 19:52:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ 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.
