Fridaygram: IPv6 day, transit of Venus, game gifs

June 08, 2012


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By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

340 trillion trillion trillion is our new favorite number. This past Tuesday was World IPv6 Launch, a huge step forward in making sure the Internet doesn’t run out of IP addresses in the near future. Until now, the universe has been using 32-bit addresses for devices on the Internet. The new version, IPv6, uses 128 bits, which increases the number of available addresses from a mere 4.3 billion to more than 340 undecillion, or more precisely, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. So, that’s a lot.



From astronomical numbers to a rare astronomical event: the transit of Venus across the sun. This event was a big deal for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft that studies the sun. The SDO and its humans produced this breathtaking video made up of images from the transit. This is way better than what you saw with your welder’s goggles.

Finally, with all this advanced technology, it’s nice to go retro now and then. You can do that by enjoying these animated GIFs of video games, for when you just can’t find your 8-bit game system. (Hat tip: Boing Boing).


Each week we publish Fridaygram, featuring stuff from Google and beyond that you might have missed during the week. Fridaygram items aren't necessarily related to developer topics; they’re just interesting to us nerds. This week we say goodbye to Ray Bradbury as he departs Earth.