Fermi estimates

[Johan Wevers]

On 14-11-2014 3:15, Robert J. Hansen wrote:

> 10**38 attempts at 10**6 bitflips per attempt equals 10**44 bitflips
> total.  At carpet-scuffing power, that's about 10**15 joules of energy,
[...]
> But to make our brute-forcer 10**30 times faster (so it
> can run in one year), our brute-forcer also has to release 10**30 times
> as much heat.
> 
> I'm not an astrophysicist, but that's the kind of energy levels one
> normally associates with phrases like "perturb the false vacuum" and
> "unmake the universe at the speed of light."  Look at the time, I must
> be going.

Fortunately there's no false vacuum left to perturb. :-)

Anyway, compared to the Sun's output of 3.82*10**26W that's still quite
large.

> 10 billion is 10**10,

PLEASE don't do that in a FAQ. The definitions of bilion, biljard etc.
differ wether one uses imperial or SI units, and thuis makes it very
confusing. For me, a bilion is 10**12. It wouldn't be the first estimate
that was off by some factors 10**6 due to mixing these up. Better to
avoid those terms completely.

-- 
ir. J.C.A. Wevers
PGP/GPG public keys at http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/pgpkeys.html