Supermassive numbers
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Russia has fined Google more than two undecillion rubles, which is more than 20 decillion dollars. How much you ask? 20 decillions is a 20 with 33 zeros behind it, more money than there is in the entire world!
This unpayable fine inspired us to look at extremely large numbers, from the amount of cells in our body, to infinity hotels and beyond. Plus, two-time world memory champion Jonas von Essen teaches us how to memorise these supermassive numbers.
Also, we unpick a dubious influential biodiversity statistic that has no basis whatsoever, and we look at the scientific tools of ghost hunting.
Plus, to round it off, presenter Marnie looks at a sport with more possible moves than there are atoms in the Universe. Can you guess what it is?
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton with Tristan Ahtone and Candice Bailey. Producer: Florian Bohr with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and Imaan Moin. Sound engineer: Rhys Morris
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might |
| 0:04.7 | like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw. |
| 0:09.2 | And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural |
| 0:14.0 | happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can |
| 0:19.7 | also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and |
| 0:22.6 | live radio, everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start |
| 0:29.2 | with our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC |
| 0:33.7 | Sounds. So this week, I went to see a man about some peaties. on BBC Sands. |
| 0:42.1 | So this week, I went to see a man about some pet food. |
| 0:44.2 | Just to be clear, I wasn't buying it. |
| 0:46.1 | I don't currently own a pet. |
| 0:48.4 | And Professor Alexander wasn't selling. |
| 0:52.3 | Instead, he'd tried to calculate its carbon footprint. |
| 0:58.9 | A few years ago, some science came out that claimed that a dachshund, a 10-kilogram dog, |
| 1:03.9 | had almost the same carbon footprint as the average Brazilian citizen. |
| 1:08.0 | And the prof read that and thought, that seems a lot. |
| 1:10.3 | I'm not convinced those numbers add up. |
| 1:13.2 | It turns out, when you dive into the numbers, there are many ways to calculate the impact of eating a cow. If you count pet food as steak, |
| 1:20.9 | it has a much larger carbon footprint than if you consider the pet meat content as the fifth quarter. |
| 1:28.0 | That's the term for all the organs and other leftovers we humans won't touch. |
| 1:32.9 | Some folk consider that to have no carbon cost at all because it's spare to meat production. |
| 1:39.3 | The professor says the real cost is somewhere in the middle. |
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