IS IT just me, or are numbers getting bigger?
Cast your mind back to the 19th century, virtually speaking. Consider a few
of the most important numbers in the science of the time. Thermodynamics
developed around numbers such as the critical point of water—at which
liquid and vapour are indistinguishable—near 647 kelvin and 218
atmospheres. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. And the founders of
electromagnetic theory simply defined their key number—the “permeability
of free space”—to be 1.
I’m cheating a bit, of course, leaving out, for example, Anders Ångström
and his unit of length.…
