What is the largest number?
There is no largest number. Numbers go on forever, because you can always add 1 to any number to get a bigger one. Mathematicians call this endlessness infinity.
No matter how big a number is, adding one makes a larger one, so the list of whole numbers never ends. Infinity, written with the symbol ∞, is not a regular number but an idea describing something without limit.
Mathematicians still give names to very large specific numbers. A googol is 10 to the power of 100, a googolplex is 10 to the power of a googol, and Graham's number is so huge that it cannot be written using ordinary powers.
Different sizes of infinity
In the 1870s, German mathematician Georg Cantor showed that some infinities are bigger than others. For example, there are more real numbers, including all decimals, than there are whole numbers, even though both sets are infinite.
Did You Know?
The largest number with its own common English name in the short scale is usually given as the centillion, 10 to the power of 303.