Discussion»Questions»Science and Technology» There are so many varieties of Flora/Fauna. Possibly infinite. We keep discovering new ones. How many homo sapiens varieties exist?
Really? I had no idea JakobA. I thought there were maybe 3-4! Shows ya what I know about stuff like that! Thank you for your reply and the helpful info. Happy Saturday! :)
Extant? One species, but each individual is unique so the answer is either one or seven billion.
As to the number of different varieties of flora and fauna, there's no possibiliy of that number being infinite. Even the number of particles in the universe is still a finite number, it's just extremely large - googol or thereabouts.
This post was edited by Slartibartfast at May 27, 2017 9:19 AM MDT
Googolplex? Well we keep discovering previously unknown things. Within the species homo sapiens how many subclasses are there? Within those subclasses how many subsubclasses are there? Within those subsubclasses how many subsubsubclasses are there? It's as impossible for me to grasp "infinite" as it is to grasp that there was never a beginning. I mean so there was the BIG BANG. What existed before that? Something had to or it could not have generated anything. Nothing comes from nothing. Something only comes from something, right? SIGH. It's too big for my brain to handle. So I just wonder. Thank you for your reply Sbf! :)
Not googolplex, that one was invented by mathematicians being smartasses - it has no practical application. The total number of elemental particles in the universe is estimated at slightly less than googol (ten to the hundredth power).
"A number that is equal to 1 followed by a googol of zeroes and expressed as 10 to the 10th power to the 100th power" The dictionary definition ends there. It does not corroborate your opinion of the word.
GOOGOL "A number that is equal to 1 followed by 100 zeros and expressed as 10 to the 100th power. It was introduced by US mathematician Edward Kasner whose 9-year-old nephew allegedly invented it."
Where is the smarta**? Is this an example of your being one Sbf? You alluded to it elsewhere on other threads. I said I had not experienced that side of you. I believe I just did.
Googolplex is a mathematical nonsense, there simply isn't anything that can be described by a number that big. Some smartass picked up on googol and ran with it. The universe isn't that many cubic microns in volume.
Vast though finite number of species, but only one Homo Sapiens species because Homo is our genus and Sapiens, our species. All of our physical race and individual characteristics are only adaptations and variations of that species.
It occurred to me later that for a time H. Neanderthalis was considered a race of humans, rather than a separate but parallel species to our own as it was so similar; but the Neanderthals have been given their species rank back. So close though that the two appeared to have been able to interbreed - normally impossible between different species - suggesting to me at least, their disappearance may have been partly by absorption.
The Neanderthals were for a long time regarded as a somewhat brutish, dim-witted lot, with no evidence to support that arrogance which gave rise to their name being a metaphor for anyone of such unsociable qualities, but modern palaeontologists and archaeologists have much more respect for them.
JakobA the unAmerican. 