i dont know what is this answer

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whiyan
whiyan on 21 Oct 2020
Commented: Walter Roberson on 21 Oct 2020
From the matlab, i got the below answer. But what is 'e' mean??
I wanna change the below to real number. Thanks
3.2959e+29

Accepted Answer

Fangjun Jiang
Fangjun Jiang on 21 Oct 2020
The value is too big to show "real number"
>> a=1000
a =
1000
>> format ShortEng
>> a
a =
1.0000e+003

More Answers (1)

Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 21 Oct 2020
The e indicates multiplication by 10 to the power of the following digits. 3.2959 times 10 to the power of 38.
This is standard scientific notation and is considered to be a "real" number.
It is possible to write out the digits like 32959 followed by 34 zeros, but in science that would imply that 33 zeros are known to be exactly right, which is a problem because there is nothing that has been measured that precisely.
  2 Comments
John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 21 Oct 2020
Actually, scientists have measured the number 1 to more digits than 33. It was mainly a group of mathematicians/grad students, who had a few too many beers at the time, so there was no real significance to the digits. However, there are plans to advance this measurement at the next party, perhaps to work on the number 2, to a significantly greater number of digits. The work will be published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. :)
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 21 Oct 2020
Their method was flawed :(
A Planck Length can obviously be associated with the number 1 -- one Planck Length. But can you measure Planck Length to additional digits of precision? No-one is entirely sure, with there being serious theories that below the Planck Length that space itself does not exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length . Therefore the number 1 cannot be measured to more than 1 digit.

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