How many things are there in the Universe

Question:

In this experiment I want to accomplish a multitude of things. I want to find the amount of possible physical things, imaginative things, and how many grains of sand there are on earth, and then compare them (two of these are going to be a given number, which we will use to find the last). One thing that is needed to complete this experiment is an open mind. “Thing” will be described as anything real or fake that can be thought about (for imaginative things). The full goal is not to see which is the largest, but to find how many things there are or could be based upon certain rules and principles. Overall, the question seems to be simple, but the steps that must be taken to complete it are going to be complex.

Hypothesis:

I expect that the largest number will be the imaginative things. I believe that this will be the largest number due to a “theory” that I created. This theory is that if you take the grains of sand on earth, then add any other real thing then the number will be higher. I also expect that the number of imaginative things will be exceedingly larger than the others. My final expectation is that the amount of imaginative things will be extremely large, but will require an active imagination to prove correct.

Procedure:

Amount of grains of sand on earth is 7.5x1018. The approximate The universe is assumed to be able to create enough energy to last a googol years (10100years). The amount of mass in the universe is approximately 3.41060 kilograms. Bremermann’s Limit is 1.36x1050bits per second per kilogram of material. The amount of possible physical things in the universe is about 1083 .The estimation of the size of the average thought is about 800 bits. All but two of these are needed to find the amount of imaginative things. The steps needed to find the amount of imaginative things are:

1: Multiply Bremermann’s Limit by the amount of mass in the observable universe.

2: Divide that number by the amount of bits the average thought is.

3: Find the amount of seconds in a googol years by finding the amount of seconds in a year and multiplying it by a googol.

4: Take that number and multiply it by the number found in step 2.

5:You will end with around 1.823x10^215 imaginative things.

Conclusion:

In conclusion it is clear to see that the largest out of the three numbers I wanted to find was the amount of imaginative things in the universe. This project showed me that science is more than physical things such as space, engineering, chemistry, biology, etc. and that math is the leading role in nearly all scientific conclusions. This experiment also showed that science can make people think about more than what is “real” but that you must sometimes open your mind to think of hypotheticals and things that are at the moment considered unreal but could be plausible. If there is any lesson or moral to be learned through this experiment is that when people say you have a big imagination, they truly mean it whether they realize it or not.

Abstract:

I decided to use this idea describe the idea here as my science fair project this year due to a video from the Youtube channel “Vsauce” titled “How Many Things are There?”. I also collected the data from the description of this video which had quite a lot of interesting information. In this experiment I wanted to accomplish a multitude of things. I wanted to find the amount of possible physical things and imaginative things on earth and find how many grains of sand there are on earth, and then compare them. I expected that the number of imaginative things will be larger due to a theory I created after beginning this experiment. My theory was that if you take all other things combined, but you imagine one extra unreal thing then it will be a larger number than the others. This could be considered as not being a theory, but it is because a theory(or hypothesis) is something that seems to be, or may be true but has not yet been proven. This is not a very complex problem, but the work that goes into solving it is complex.

This experiment is primarily math based, which could most likely be concluded by reading the title. The first step to completing this project is collecting the information that will be needed for the project; amount of grains of sand on earth, the size of the current observable universe, average amount of elementary particles, size of a planck volume/length, how many things the size of a planck volume could fit in the observable universe, how long the universe will be able to create useable energy, the amount of mass in the universe, a guestimation of the amount of bits an average thought is, Bremermann's Limit, how many physical things there are in the universe, and how many seconds there can be in the universe from beginning to end. The second step I did was use this information to find the information stated in the previous paragraph. The amount of possible physical things is 1083.The amount of possible imaginative things is 1.823x10224 The amount of grains of sand on earth is roughly 7.5x1018. With this information it is clear that the amount of possible imaginative things is much greater than the others, even when they are combined.

In this experiment I compared the amount of physical things, imaginative things, and amount of grains of sand. I found that these numbers are so drastically different the human mind can not begin to imagine the size or difference between them. The largest number out of these three is imaginative by a long shot. Although I have proven it, I may not have had to go through such drastic measures to do so; it is clear that if you take the number of grains of sand on earth you will be able to see there is a larger number of physical or imaginative things by adding any other thing to that number. This is true, but the point of science isn’t to make assumptions but to prove those assumptions to be true. The following information is “filling in the blank” for the information previously stated as needed for the experiment. Amount of grains of sand on earth is 7.5x1018. The approximate size of the observable universe is 62 billion light years. The average amount of elementary particles(particles that we currently know as the building blocks of all things) in the Universe is 1080.The amount of things that can fit inside the Observable Universe the size of a planck volume is 10183. The universe is assumed to be able to create enough energy to last a googol years (10100years). The amount of mass in the universe is approximately 3.41060 kilograms. Bremermann’s Limit is 1.36x1050bits per second per kilogram of material. In the universe, from beginning to end there will be 3.154x10166seconds. The guestimation of the size of the average thought is about 800 bits. All information not stated are units of measurement which do not have an explanation other than their physical size.

In conclusion it is clear to see that the largest out of the three numbers I wanted to find was the amount of imaginative things in the universe. This project showed me that science is more than physical things such as space, engineering, chemistry, biology, etc. and that math is the leading role in nearly all scientific conclusions. This experiment also showed that science can make people think about more than what is “real” but that you must sometimes open your mind to think of hypotheticals and things that are at the moment considered unreal but could be plausible. If there is any lesson or moral to be learned through this experiment is that when people say you have a big imagination, they truly mean it whether they realize it or not.