Will We Run Out Of Phone Numbers? | Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains...

[Music] chuck yes i've been looking forward to this one uh-oh that's explainer video okay what do you mean oh that's good oh this this reveals your mixed emotions about this yeah well you know i told you it's always uh it's always an adventure not not because of what we talk about but because you pick some pretty um out there stuff like out there stuff so so we're gonna this one's gonna be about um id numbers see that's what i was talking about and tracking numbers that's what it that's exactly what you're talking about this is exactly what i'm saying you know what i mean okay and it's like hey man listen this is what i love about the explainers it's like if you're at a cocktail party and somebody says something and you're like oh so boy here we go and then you're stuck because you're both sharing a drink and looking at each other in that moment right right then when they tell you whatever it is you're like oh wow oh right you know like it's really it's terrifying and refreshing all at the same time okay all right so let's look at social security numbers okay uh so the format is what uh three two four three two four so if that's the format you can ask the very simple question and and every every working person in the united states every citizen gets a social security number yes how many possible people can those social security numbers cover okay this is a very natural question right of course it is will they run out of social security numbers yeah it's like will they run out of phone numbers okay we'll get there that's the next thing we're gonna do okay okay so so with social security number you have three digits and by the way it matters for this calculation each of those digits can be anywhere from zero to nine the ten numerals of our counting system okay okay zero through nine the same with the second digit the third and the the two middles and the four on the right so for every digit for every slot in an id number and let's just treat the case of pure counting numbers for now for every slot there are ten times as many slots as the previous one that you counted okay every slot there's ten times as many slots as the previous one you just got okay okay so so maybe i could have said that better but if you have just one one set of digits to count people right okay the most you can count is ten that's if someone agrees to be counted as zero right exactly okay that's the most you get that you get that sometimes you see these sometimes you see the football players and they're like zero you know oh and they're and i'm just like okay all right i don't know but they have double zero which is different well there's double zero you know what double zero is no it's a hundred it's a hundred okay double zero is because they don't put three digits across their back all right wait a minute guys here we go we gotta go uh we got to go let's see this is explainer inception because we're in an explainer but now we must go inside another explainer because seriously what do you mean it's a hundred well well could well let me put say it another way that is my understanding because you can't put 100 on a jersey so they put two zeros i got what you're saying so you start at zero you go to 99 if you're 99 well then if somebody wants to be 100 they got to be double zero they got they're double zero so that's what the double zero is is what's as might as i understand it but all right now take this pill so that we can get out of this explainer and get back to the other explainer for those of you who have not seen the film inception okay this is it's kind of a uh yeah it's a mind meld uh you got to get inside the brain of the dream inside the brain of the person who's dreaming all right so uh so so if you got one digit if people agreed that they could be numbered zero you can it works for ten people right okay so now you have two digits so all you have to do is count until you run out of digits so you can start with zero right and then you go up to 99. there we go how many numbers is that it's a hundred that's a hundred right okay so with two slots it's ten times the previous one right okay with three slots you would start out zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero two blah blah blah blah zero one zero zero one one one two one three one zero zero there two three four and you do all of that you get up to how high a thousand no oh nine ninety nine nine nine because you only have three decimal places right a thousand requires four that's not allowed yet okay right you get up to 999 okay plus the zeros you started with so three decimal places does get you to a thousand because you started with zeros on that okay all right so you can just keep doing this and let's do this for the social security number all right so the social security numbers has there's four five six seven eight nine slots nine slots right so if they're all nines okay we have nine nines that's 999 million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand three six nine yeah 999 million 999 999 right okay now i add the if someone we're all zeroes i don't know if anybody is but let's imagine that that gets it up to how many uh which one more than 999 million 100 million votes no one more that's 999 million and one though no no no no it's we're at 999 a million 909 thousand 999 right okay then right so we're at a billion now billion there you go yeah we're at a billion now and in honor of carl sagan we shall say a billion billion so social security numbers can accommodate a billion people wow which i mean and they all have to be living well so i don't know if they reuse social security numbers of dead people i just don't know i didn't check on that but if they do that's fine because the population in the united states is like 340 million so we have enough social security numbers for three times basically three times the population of the united states right that's kind of cool that's kind of cool yeah so so if they run out because they they somehow preserve the social security numbers of dead people then they'd have to add a digit right so be it would be four digits two digits then four digits and that will give you ten times more and that'll that'll take us we hope the population doesn't ever get that high right and we run out of resources now you're in the thanos territory okay where's thanos when you need them the snappers fingers to save us from ourselves okay which movie is that from that is um that's what marvel movie is that it's avengers yeah something end game end game game and avengers end game well it's spread across a couple of films actually so okay so let's do it with phone numbers okay okay so in the old way before we move on yeah you sure you don't want to offer the people your social security [Laughter] by the way i don't know if you remember the guy who i don't forget the company but he did a stunt where he went on national tv and he was like this is my social security number and my my uh security company is so secure that i'm letting you have because i could never be hacked and of course they hacked him and ruined a guy okay yeah you can always be here's the here's a deep lesson for us all right you can always be hacked by someone smarter than you there you go that's what it means when the person is smarter than you that's it okay right you can have well i'm an expert hack protector and you hire me and then i do and and i close all the loops and everything that's good until someone smarter than me comes along right and and gets through it that's all so you need the single smartest hacker in the world to protect you and then you're good absolutely except we're still getting we're still giving birth to more people i was going to say except that day will never come all right let's go back in the old days of phone numbers where no one really carried the the area code because area codes really demarked area and you really didn't know many people outside your area code and if you did it was a special moment to call long distance operator i'm calling long distance right that's how old we both are because we remember that let's go back to the seven digits so seven digits they can each be well the lead digit can't be a zero but let's ignore that for now let's assume they each had ten digits so seven of these would be 99 million is this right no no nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine got you okay that's that's seven digits right nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine that's all full up so i worked pretty much everywhere in the country all you needed was seven digits because there were no cities or states that had more than nine million people even new york at that time the population yeah was it that you needed nine million people is it did you have nine million phones nine million phones exactly because households only had one phone one phone right right right now you might have had two phones because you have a business phone at your office and then one at home but that isn't that funny i didn't even think you're thinking of everybody i'm thinking everybody has a number but no back then you had a phone in your house and and if you were on green acres right town had one had a phone okay that's rough green acres a television show from the 1960s so we need we need some subtext here so people can keep track of these references and it's still on tv by the way so nine million nine hundred ninety thousand nine hundred nine yeah that's basically ten million people and so then uh when the total number of phones started getting out of hand this happened in new york city pretty early okay uh the city's population is 8 million but everyone of course had an office phone sometimes you had more than one office phone and people getting multiple lines in their own home and said we gotta we don't want to stop this but we have to fix it and so they forced everyone in new york we were among the first to do this to have to dial 10 digits to even call locally yeah okay the three area codes for manhattan manhattan and we added seven one eight one eight and that was basically for the outer boroughs but still it just became this mix and so now once you add an area code you have three extra digits so you went from nine million nine hundred nine thousand nine or nine to ninety million i mean two nine yeah 99 billion 999 million 999 999 that's the 10 digits that's the ten days okay so those ten digits if you add the zero at the beginning which we wouldn't but just to get it's a ballpark number here we'll be getting 10 billion phone numbers right that's plenty yeah for now well that's plenty for the united states yeah okay so now the united states has a plus one in front okay was that north america i forgot which that's the country code a country code so now in addition we've added an eleventh digit that's right okay and country codes don't only go to nine some countries have two codes so they're 12 digits oh my gosh 12 digits that's a trillion okay 999 billion 999 million 999 999 plus one is a trillion so we basically have enough phone numbers for trillion phones in the world with with the 10 digits plus the country code and by the way if if you have sprint none of them are getting reception just just let me know okay but wait so it's not just ids or phone numbers how about a fedex number okay okay okay you've probably sent many more fedexes than you own phones oh without a doubt okay so fedex has 12 digits in it okay however i i think fedex can also have letters in there yes they do okay letters so every time you hit a letter you don't multiply by 10 you multiply by the total number of letters available to you which is 126. 26. so every letter slot in an id code you multiply whatever was going on up to them not by 10 but by 26 damn yes and so the number can get really big really fast like airplane reservation codes right those are six right um [Music] there's six characters and i think they can be either letters or numbers it doesn't make a difference does it make a difference they can randomize okay which means each slot has how many possibilities uh 26 plus 10 right 36 slots so it's 36 times 36 times 36 times 36 times 36 times 36. damn i telling you now let me do that right quick here yeah and here and it doesn't make a difference because uh no matter what you're not going to be able to uh get the lady on the phone to understand you see that's okay and may i have your reservation number yeah okay so the reservation number i get so 36 to the sixth power is what that is i get 2 billion 176 million 782 336. so that's how many total possible reserve billion reservation codes are possible with those six and never repeating okay but why not repeat them i mean you know use a code from 10 years ago who cares exactly right yeah right yeah i mean yeah they're not going to honor it anyway so so that's that's how you figure out how many total codes there are that's amazing that's how you do that all right well this was super fun chuck that's all we have time for all right all right another star talk explainer chuck nice always good to have you man always a pleasure neil degrasse tyson keep looking up [Music] you

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 148,621

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, phone numbers, ID numbers, permutations

Id: 7QsEaDUGc4c

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022