Word: quadrillions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...result is one of the great statistical zingers of our age: every month, 4 quadrillion transistors are produced, more than half a million for every human on the planet. Intel's space-suited workers etch more than 7 million, in lines one four-hundredth the thickness of a human hair, on each of its thumbnail-size Pentium II chips, which sell for about $500 and can make 588 million calculations a second...
Computer scientists benefit from vox-pop research too. In 1994, four encryption experts enlisted 600 Internet volunteers to crack a secret code protected by a software "key" 129 digits long. Its creators had estimated that it would take 40 quadrillion years to solve the puzzle; the online team did it in eight months and in the process gave software designers new insights into building better security systems. Hackers have become so adept at finding security holes in the Internet that Netscape, maker of the leading Web browser, pays a bounty for any chinks in the program's encryption armor that...
...ensures that not enough active ingredient is left to do any harm. But it also ensures that not enough is left to do any good. Consumer Reports in July examined homeopathic treatments for vaginal yeast infections, noting that the 28X dilution means that "the mixture had 10 trillion quadrillion times as much of the inert ingredients as active ingredients." To stimulate the body's defenses with little--or none--of the original medication, scientists contend, would require a miracle...
...dumber than hauling 85 tons of Antarctic ice halfway around the world to be showcased at Expo '92 in Seville? Hauling it back again. The Chileans are doing just that, thanks to environmentalists who railed against desecrating the frozen continent. Never mind that the theft left approximately 100 quadrillion tons of the stuff still intact; the ice is now in Valparaiso, soon to head south in an insulated container. Antarctica will be whole -- and the atmosphere will have to absorb an extra load of pollution, the by-product of fuel burned in shipping the berg back home...
...same species that terrorized Florida for several years during the 1970s, they can also cause disaster on a biblical scale. Sexually mature at the age of five months, a single pregnant, hermaphroditic snail can, if it escapes to the wild, give rise to as many as 16 quadrillion descendants in five years. Armed with 80,000 rasping teeth and weighing up to a pound, each of these offspring can wade through an entire head of lettuce at one sitting. "It eats anything," says University of Michigan zoologist J.B. Burch. House paint. Dead Rats. Beer. Describing an infestation in Ceylon early...