Googol

That's googol and not googolplex. A googol is 10 raised to the hundredth power where a googolplex is 10 raised to the googol power. All that is explained here in Wikipedia.

I came across a number much larger than a googol in Discover magazine, December 2008, in an article starting on page 52 titled "A Universe Built for Us" by Tim Folger. Online the article is re-titled "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory". The number appears on page 57 in the magazine and has a value of 10 raised to the 1,000 power, ten followed by one thousand zeros.

That seems like a very large number to me, but it appears in this article as a speculation of how many different universes there would have to be in creation in order for one of them to support life as we know it. In other words if the universe we exist in evolved randomly after the Big Bang, there would have to be ten followed by a thousand zeros other universes out there that randomly evolved differently from ours.

Fascinating thought, I know.

But the most fascinating part is that the article seems to be saying that scientists, in order to rule out the possibility that our universe's evolution was guided by any form of intelligence, are saying that there must be ten followed by a thousand zeros other universes out there all randomly evolving and none capable of supporting life as we know it.

Smart men these scientists, don't you think?

Climategate taught us that scientists use "tricks" to prove their theories. Would this qualify as a trick?