Thread View: sci.crypt
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6 total messages
Started by David Palmer
Sun, 06 Dec 1987 01:18
NSA advertisment
Author: David Palmer
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1987 01:18
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1987 01:18
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I just read a magazine add seeking people to work at the NSA (pg. 80R of Dec. 1987 IEEE Spectrum) The graphic is 10,000,0... (100 zeros) written on three lines. The first paragraph of the text reads: You're looking at a "googol." Ten raised to the 100th power. One followed by 100 zeros. Counting 24 hours a day, you would need 120 years to reach a googol. Two lifetimes. It's a number that's impossible to grasp. A number beyond our imagination. I just thought that people in this newsgroup would like to know that the NSA has machines which can count at 1e90 Hz. It sort of makes RSA look trivial to crack by exhaustion. Or perhaps there's something wrong with their ability to grasp numbers beyond their imagination. David Palmer palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu ...rutgers!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!palmer The opinions expressed are those of an 8000 year old Atlantuan priestess named Mrla, and not necessarily those of her channel.
Re: NSA advertisment
Author: newton2
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1987 21:09
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1987 21:09
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Gee, even *I* can count at 1E90 hz, and "exhaustion" is the proper term for the result of trying to count even to 10E6 at that rate. doug maisel
Re: NSA advertisment
Author: Varol Akman
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1987 08:59
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1987 08:59
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palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) writes: >I just read a magazine add seeking people to work at the NSA (pg. 80R of >Dec. 1987 IEEE Spectrum) >The graphic is 10,000,0... (100 zeros) written on three lines. The first >paragraph of the text reads: > You're looking at a "googol." Ten raised to the 100th power. > One followed by 100 zeros. Counting 24 hours a day, you would > need 120 years to reach a googol. Two lifetimes. It's a > number that's impossible to grasp. A number beyond our imagination. >... material deleted ... This strikes me as quite odd. I mean, if something can be done in two lifetimes then, darn it, it is well within my imagination. If it can be done within 20 lifetimes I can still grasp how difficult it should be. A real difficult thing would be something that takes say 10^100 lifetimes. In short, I find the above ad quite naive. NSA guys should probably have something better than this for the inspring encryption student. What do you say? -Varol Akman
Re: NSA advertisment
Author: gupta
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1987 21:33
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1987 21:33
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In article <6200@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, newton2@violet.berkeley.edu writes: > Gee, even *I* can count at 1E90 hz, and "exhaustion" is the proper > term for the result of trying to count even to 10E6 at that rate. > > doug maisel No you can't 1E90 = 1.0 * (10 ** 90) and not 1 ** 90. Or have you forgotten the scientific notation :-)?
Re: NSA advertisment
Author: stevec
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1987 20:34
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1987 20:34
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>In article <6200@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, newton2@violet.berkeley.edu writes:
>> Gee, even *I* can count at 1E90 hz, and "exhaustion" is the proper
>> term for the result of trying to count even to 10E6 at that rate.
>>
>> doug maisel
>No you can't 1E90 = 1.0 * (10 ** 90) and not 1 ** 90. Or have you
>forgotten the scientific notation :-)?
Well, now that we have agreed about the number in question,
lets ask, what pyhysical phenomena occur at that frequency?
Lets see.
The speed of light is about 3E8m/s. So, in one
clock pulse at the given frequence, light can travel
3E-82m.
Whats the radius of, say, a proton? If memory serves it is within
20 orders of magnitude of 1E-20m.
Nuff said.
Steve
{backbone}ubc-vision!fornax!stevec UUCP
Re: NSA advertisment
Author: Ed Falk
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1987 18:13
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1987 18:13
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palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) writes: >I just read a magazine add seeking people to work at the NSA (pg. 80R of >Dec. 1987 IEEE Spectrum) >The graphic is 10,000,0... (100 zeros) written on three lines. The first >paragraph of the text reads: > You're looking at a "googol." Ten raised to the 100th power. > One followed by 100 zeros. Counting 24 hours a day, you would > need 120 years to reach a googol. Two lifetimes. It's a > number that's impossible to grasp. A number beyond our imagination. >... material deleted ... When I was in junior high, I worked out a similar problem... Just now, with a stop-watch, I determined that it takes me 3 seconds to recite a 9-digit number to myself. That includes reciting the words 'million' and 'thousand'. I assume that reciting a 99-digit word would take 33 seconds. The 100-digit numbers and 99-digit numbers are 99% of all the numbers you recite on the way there, so we don't have to worry about the smaller numbers. Therefore, it takes slightly more than .99 * 33 * 10^100 seconds to count to a 100-digit number. That's 1.04*10^94 years. This is somewhat more than two lifetimes. It's even more than two lifetimes of the universe. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than the number of elementary particles in the universe. -- -ed falk, sun microsystems sun!falk, falk@sun.com terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO.
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