Speaking of numbers that are hard to grasp. Our mind is even less equipped in grasping exponential growth. We just don’t get it. The famous ‘Powers of 10′ video is a good example. If you haven’t seen it you should. Look at the website or just go to YouTube and search for ‘powers of ten’. In each few seconds the viewing distance is multiplied with ten, starting one meter above a couple having pick nick in a park. You don’t need an awful lot of 10-fold sequences to escape the milky way! It is hard to grasp the growth rate. It is going so fast.
If you imagine that the number of atoms in the universe is estimated on a 10 to the power of 88, you are astouned, because it feels like an exptreme small figure. I mean, the amount of dollars spend at the Irak war is already 10 to the power of 12. The amount of people on earth is 10 to the power of 6. The point is, our mind assumes the exponent as a sort of ‘repeated sum’ as opposed to a ‘repeated multiplcation’.