X-Message-Number: 3560 Date: Sat, 31 Dec 94 13:47:11 From: mike <> Subject: CRYONICS biggest number Yvan Bozonetti (#3551) poses the question of what is the biggest number you can represent using just three 9's, and (presumably) ordinary arithmetic connectives with the ordinary meanings. Although 9^(9^9) would seem to be the reasonable answer, another, only slightly unreasonable answer, a still bigger "number", is 9/(9-9) = 9/0 = infinity! :-) A friend of mine who who works for Apple Computer has a math system that actually allows division by 0 so infinity is really a legitimate quantity (useful for some calculations, as you might imagine); also you can divide a finite number by infinity to get zero. To tie this into cryonics, I'd like to live 9/(9-9) years (AT LEAST!) and see cryonics as a better way to further this than certain well-known alternatives ... Happy New Year! Mike Perry. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3560