SUPER-WEMBLEYWORTHS AND OTHER BIG NUMBERS

There’s a new book out about big numbers. I’d like to read it - it’s a sort of exploration of the weird realm between the finite and the infinite, where numbers are incomputably large.

I’ve always found it interesting how I can see a collection of items and just know how many there are without counting. What’s your upper limit, do you think? Mine’s probably seven. I think I start to get a lot less certain beyond that.

Then I think about how large a crowd I can imagine. That’s based on experience - 80,000 is the largest crowd I’ve been in. I can picture a Wembley-worth, but I’d have a hard time getting my head around 160,000 or 500,000. I know it sounds incredible, but I would not be able to tell the difference.

Then, in the UK, where I live, there are almost 70 million people. That is 875 Wembleyworths. It’s almost impossible to imagine that many stadia, packed with thousands of seats. And the noise! Imagine ‘Sweet Caroline’ being belted out by a Super-Wembleyworth! Cringeworthy. I have thoughts about that song that aren’t popular at the best of times.

And how many Super-Wembleyworths are there in the USA? There are just over four. Four Super-Wembleyworths. Noisy bunch.

And yet each one of us in our millions of seats, squished into our stadium, has a beating heart and a vibrant soul. Amazing.

And then. Seven billion people live here on our planet. It’s mind-bendingly huge. It’s over a hundred Super Wembleyworths, which means 87,500 roaring stadia. To fit them into the UK, they’d have to be built about 2km apart. Imagine. You’d never be further than 2000m from another stadium.

Well, you’d be in one, I suppose, in your allocated seat.

Anyway. Big numbers are unimaginable and scary. In fact, so much so that they sort of become meaningless. That’s how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the others get away with it. Nevertheless a billion is a thousand times bigger than a million. Worth remembering.

So this book looks intriguing. I like that boundary that exists between mathematics and philosophy - it’s everywhere, but we rarely think about it, I suppose.

Much like the stars. Gosh, there are lots of those too, scattered and stretched across the deep fabric of the universe, perhaps at the centres of trillions of solar systems where on planets like ours, civilisations gather in sports stadia to sing out Sweet Caroline - the universal anthem of harmony and good times. Though to be honest, I hope not.