How big??
A recent article proposed that superconducting sheets may be able to reflect gravitational waves, and furthermore might already be detected in the data returned by Gravity Probe B. Part of the article talks about how the mass supercurrents are enhanced by the Coulomb force in superconducting sheet, greatly increasing the effect. How much greater? 42 orders of magnitude greater. This sparked a discussion on just how great a 42 orders of magnitude change is. Here are some examples:
1 kg is approximately one liter of water. 1x10^42 kilograms is The Milky Way Galaxy. All of it.
1x10^-16 meters is 1/10th the width of an electron. 42 orders of magnitude higher is 1x10^26, which is one-tenth the width of the observable universe.
Alternatively, 1x10^-24 is the radius of a neutrino. 42 orders of magnitude higher is 1x10^18, which is about 100 light years.
For the width of a hydrogen atom to be set to 1, 42 orders of magnitude larger would be 10000 times larger than the diameter of the observable universe.
The smallest length known is Plank length, at 1.6x10^-35 m. 42 orders of magnitude larger would be a third again larger than the Earth (which is 1.2x10^7 m).
42 orders of magnitude is huge.
1 kg is approximately one liter of water. 1x10^42 kilograms is The Milky Way Galaxy. All of it.
1x10^-16 meters is 1/10th the width of an electron. 42 orders of magnitude higher is 1x10^26, which is one-tenth the width of the observable universe.
Alternatively, 1x10^-24 is the radius of a neutrino. 42 orders of magnitude higher is 1x10^18, which is about 100 light years.
For the width of a hydrogen atom to be set to 1, 42 orders of magnitude larger would be 10000 times larger than the diameter of the observable universe.
The smallest length known is Plank length, at 1.6x10^-35 m. 42 orders of magnitude larger would be a third again larger than the Earth (which is 1.2x10^7 m).
42 orders of magnitude is huge.