Just a small point (that can make a big diff)...the Sun is made up of
ingredients other than Hydrogen.   :-)

Ray Shahan

"There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it behooves none of us
to talk about the rest of us"
                  --Robert Louis Stevenson?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Dunlop [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 7:44 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      [HP3000-L] OT : More Chess moves than atoms in the universe?
>
> Just a little thought for the mathematicians amongst us...
>
> According to an article in the Focus magazine here in the UK,  it
> suggests that "there are more moves on a chess board than atoms in the
> Universe". It goes on to justify that assertion by claiming that "on
> average, each position on a chess board opens up around 38 legal moves.
> So in a typical chess match of 40 or so moves for each player, there are
> around 38 to the power of 80 possible moves. This works out roughly to
> 10 to the power of 126. For an estimate of the number of atoms in the
> Universe, we can use the findings of a team of astronomers led by Dr
> Simon Driver. They estimate that the brightness of galaxies in the
> cosmos suggests there are around 7 x 10 to the power of 22 stars in the
> visible Universe. A typical star has a mass around one tenth that of the
> Sun which itself consists of around 10 to the power of 57 atoms of
> hydrogen. Multiplying these figures together, we end up with a figure of
> around 10 to the power of 79 atoms in the Universe - far fewer than the
> number of moves in a typical chess game".
>
> This all sounds total nonsense to me. Does it make any sense to anyone?
> Wirt?
>
> Cheers,
>
> John Dunlop
>
> E-mail : [log in to unmask]      "If at first you don't succeed..
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>
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