Google far from Googol

Question: Has the "Googol" search engine performed a google searches yet? Or should that be, has the "Google" search engine performed a googol searches yet? And what are all these searches about anyway?

Answer: Googol is the fabulously Big number, 1 followed by 100 zeros, named by a relative of mathematician Edward Kasner, says John Battelle in "The Search." But at barely 5 billion Google searches daily, don't expect a googol googlings anytime soon: Even at a billion every second since the birth of the universe 10 billion years ago, that would amount to only 10^26 — i.e., not even a bite out of a googol's 10^100. Interestingly, the Google inventors confused the two words and thought they had chosen the name of the Big number for their new engine.

As to the world's Google profile, some 65 percent of searches are informational, 20 percent about entertainment and 15 percent commercial. Nearly 100 percent of us have searched on our own names (vanity searches), 30 percent-40 percent for old friends, some 20 percent for former flames. Google Inc. says that most word combos entered in are unique. In fact the early popular game GoogleWhacking challenged users to find a query with exactly one result.

Question: Suddenly, on a calm, serene-looking sea, a massive wave rocks the ship, terrifying everyone. What's behind these all-too-common "rogue waves"?

Answer: They've been part of nautical lore from Virgil's "Aeneid" 2,000 years ago to the recent film remake "Poseidon." The highest ever observed was in 1933 when a 34-meter "monster wave" (about 110 feet) hit the Navy tanker USS Ramapo, says Sid Perkins in "Science News." Most often encountered during storms, such waves can also appear on calm seas, bedeviling captains of oil tankers and cargo ships, or workers on oil platforms or on ships laying underwater cables.

Composite waves are often bigger than the total of individual waves comprising them and travel in "trains," passing energy back and forth. At their crests, rogues can seem like "mountains of water," their troughs like "holes in the sea." Then they can disappear almost as quickly as they formed. Bad weather or passing trains can trigger them, as well as winds, seafloor shape, coastlines. Yet better science and better predictions are on the way, Perkins says, and in some regions rogue-wave alerts are already being tested, a boon to industry and pleasure-boaters alike.

Question: Got a baby on the way? What's going on in its brain right now to get it ready for the wide-world-to-come?