You might know that a googol—the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes—is a very large number indeed. You might even know that a googolplex—a 1 followed by a googol of zeros—is an even bigger number. But ...

What is the largest number you can imagine? I’m sure more than one reader will paraphrase Han Solo, thinking they can imagine a lot. But whatever the number they say, it surely doesn’t even come close ...

There are around 920 to 3,170 octillion microbes on the planet (920 x 10^27 to 3170 x 10^27), Steven D'Hondt, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told Live Science. This ...