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svobodamartintoday at 7:27 PM1 replyview on HN

My favorite one is with the 52! seconds:

Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. Then walk around the Earth’s equator with one step every billion years. Then, after you make your way around the earth equator (by taking 1 step every billion of years), you take one drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean. Then, you repeat the process of walking around the equator, and everytime you walk around, you keep draining one singular drop of water. After the ocean is fully drained, you refill the ocean and put a piece of paper underneath you. Now, you once again repeat this process of walking, draining, and placing papers. After your stack of papers has reached the Sun, you repeat another 1000 times.

After all this, you have completed just about a third of the timer.

https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2025/02/26/how-big-is-52/


Replies

davidnctoday at 7:41 PM

For another perspective, 52! is roughly the number of atoms in a galaxy. Galaxies are really quite large!