
How many chess games could there be compared to atoms in the universe?
Image: Isidore of Seville, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
How many chess games could there be compared to atoms in the universe?
Imagine you have a friend who loves chess. They say there's a game for every possible move they could make. But, when they look at the stars, they wonder how many stars there are compared to all those chess games.
If you think about every possible move in a chess game, it's like counting every star in the universe. But, there are so many stars, it's like counting stars instead of chess games.
Example
If you had 10 chess games for every star, you'd still have more chess games than stars.
Remember this
There are more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Chemistry: A Volatile History
52! ≈ 8 × 10^67 possible arrangements of a deck of cards
Pi
Pi has been calculated to over 100 trillion digits
Quantum mind
Can quantum computers solve puzzles faster than our brains?
Richard Feynman's diagrams turned quantum field theory calculations from intractable algebra into picture-bookkeeping
How can a complex quantum world be simplified?
Grigori Perelman
Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture
Quantum mechanics
Ever wondered how tiny particles behave differently than big objects?
Swipe through 100 ML concepts daily
Open Pocket Polymath