Power of Geometric Progression

Recently i heard an anecdote regarding the power of geometric progression, the anecdote goes like this:

There was a Sadhu(saint), who lives a normal life in the forests roaming near by villages for food and he is very knowledgeable person in all aspects and it is believed that he is the inventor of chess game.

Once he got a chance meet the king and explained the game, king got fascinated about the game as it involves the real life scenario and that to it's associated with the strategy.

King liked the game and told to sadhu that ask what ever you want i will give you, then sadhu asked i want rice, king replied that ask some thing that suits my status like gold, precious stones, etc.

Sadhu didn't change his mind and king told nodded for the sadhu request and asked hoe much rich you want then he told some conditions for fulfilling the the sadhu words, the conditions are:-

• Rice that can be filled the boxes of the chess board( 64 boxes) and 
• The number of rive grains should be double of every box succeeding it i.e., 1,2,4,8,16,32.....

At end of the day the king couldn't fulfill the sadhu gift and even he sold his entire kingdom for the fulfilling the sadhu gift because the condition that the sadhu told of the geometric progression series i.e.,

1,2,4,8,16,32,64,126,...(1,2^1,2^2,2^3,2^4,2^5,2^6,2^7,2^8....)

In another instance, Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Tipping point", he explains that when a paper is folded 50 times then the distance would as the approximate distance to the sun from the earth. That is the power of geometric progression.