雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第4章:彼岸新星(104)

10^34 is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – a number comparable with the number of elementary particles in a large building.

10^34就是10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000，這個數大約是組成一個大型建築的原子的數量。

But 101034 is far bigger: as 1 followed by 1034 zeroes it would require books with the mass of Jupiter to print it in decimAl notation.

101034是一個更大的數，它是1後面跟着1034個0，這可能需要海量的紙才能在十進制下把它寫出來，

It could be thought of as the number of possible man-made objects.

你可以想象這是人類有史以來製造的所有物體的總數。

Skewes' number was much bigger again, as 1 followed by 101034 zeroes!

斯奇烏斯數則是一個更更大的數，1後面跟着101034個0！

In actual fact mathematicians had certainly thought about numbers far larger than these,

事實上，數學家們肯定也想到過比這還大的數，

here we have only gone through three stages of growth, but it is not difficult to make up a new notation to express the idea of going through ten such stages, or 1010, or 1010; or of regarding even these as just the first step in a process of super-growth,

因爲這裏只不過進行了3層指數運算，我們可以輕易地進行10層，1010層，101010層，甚至把這些作爲一個增長的步驟，

and then defining super-super-growth, and then....

然後定義一種超級增長，然後超級超級增長，然後……

Such definitions, indeed,had already played a role in the theory of 'recursive functions', one of the other approaches to the idea of 'definite method' which had been found equivalent to thet of the Turing machine.

這種定義，實際上就用到了遞歸函數，這是等價於圖靈機的另外一種研究機械過程的工具。

But Skewes' number was certainly remarkably large for a problem which could be expressed in such elementary terms.

無論如何，在我們一般的角度看來，斯奇烏斯數已經大得驚人了。

Certainly one attraction to Alan of the New Statesman would have been its exceptionally demanding puzzle column.

很明顯，《新政客》的一個吸引艾倫的原因是它的解謎專欄。