Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

They can go large enough for anything that matters.

A quick Google says there's an estimate of 10^78 to 10^82 atoms in the universe. That number would be able to be stored in well under 300 bits.




Universe is tiny compared to mathematics and software, even simply RSA keys are already 2048bit.

Lots of problems suffer from 'combinatorial explosion' [1].

I recently learned about the Archimedes's cattle problem, the solution is of order 10^206544 [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_explosion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27s_cattle_problem


10^206544 would still be less than 8 kB. You could store it on an Atari cartridge!




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: