Why is this MongoDB ObjectID infinite in Google spreadsheet?

Question

Type the MongoDB ObjectID 52489e882967060200000283 into a cell in a Google spreadsheet and it's clobbered by ∞. What gives?

Answer 1

See that small e in the middle? Google Sheets is treating this as a number in exponent form. i.e.

52489 x 10^882967060200000283

Probably less than the number of subatomic particles in the known universe, but close enough to infinity not to matter.

Edit: Actually, the number of atoms in the known universe is estimated to be about 1 x 10^82, so this is slightly larger...

Answer 2

I remember that mongo objectID is in hexadecimal. So the e actually means 14. But google mistakenly treat it as a exponential.

Source: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/method/ObjectId/