The first in a throw-away series of matter-of-fact statements about incomprehensibly large or improbable concepts:
#1 – From Wikipedia’s entry on NTP (Network Time Protocol)
Background – NTP will soon represent timestamps using two 64bit numbers; one for the whole number of seconds, and one for the fractional part of the second:
According to Mills, “The 64 bit value for the fraction is enough to resolve the amount of time it takes a photon to pass an electron at the speed of light. The 64 bit second value is enough to provide unambiguous time representation until the universe goes dim.”[4] Indeed, 2−64 seconds is about 54 zeptoseconds, and 264 seconds is about 585 billion years.
That ought to do it.
