Numbers and infinity

[bennybikerboy]

I was just wondering if there was some machine/ website that's constantly counting. Like a number that's pages long like:

23482349023804850981123472389472398479238742389571 20985721389471239084712389057123890759081237490812 37490812374901234812375890758903472590... ect.

I'd like to see where they're at.

Yes, I know that you can't reach infinity because you're not able to because it's, well, fucking infinity! :cool:

[Raymac]

I think there's a running clock showing the US Deficit. Thats getting closer to infinity.

[Kyonye]

I think there's a running clock showing the US Deficit. Thats getting closer to infinity.

This is the closest anyone has every gotten to infinity...

[Mightymouser]

It's not 'counting' but there are some very long extrapolations of pi available...

here it is to 4 million digits: http://zenwerx.com/projects/pi-digits/pi/

[Rbstr]

Yes, I know that you can't reach infinity because you're not able to because it's, well, fucking infinity! :cool:

There are such things as countable and uncountable infinities. Some infinities are "faster" than others.

For instance, you could count all the natural numbers (integers 0 or larger) if you had forever.
You however could not count every possible number including decimals (there's an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1 ect.).

learn2math. :)

[Sirisian]

Rbstr pointed out the mathematical side. From the computer science side just take all the bits you have and set them to get the largest base 2 value. No need to count unless you actually want to know the computer isn't cheating and is actually verifying the existence of that number by representing it. Then again there are proofs for that as mentioned.

[Traak]

I think there's a running clock showing the US Deficit. Thats getting closer to infinity.

Quote of the Week.

[Traak]

They use large numbers as bases for encryption.

The usual formula, at least that they admit, for generating very large, non-repeating prime numbers is 2 to the power of some other prime number, minus one.
2^2 minus one is 3
2^3 minus one is 7
2^5 minus one is 31

And on it goes.

There must be more sophisticated methods for determining large prime numbers, such as getting the largest prime number you can find, then squaring it, then subtracting one, and so on.

To simplify, if you wanted to send a message and only had a single-digit number to scramble it with, it wouldn't take much code-breaking computational power to try all ten single digit numbers to find which one was used to scramble a message.

But if you use a number that has a few thousand digits? A few million?

Decrypting might be possible, if the encryption algorithm is known, but the computer time involved gets pretty prohibitive.

Much easier to just seduce, entrap, threaten, and employ one of your target's trusted personnel.