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I'm trying to understand how bitcoin block solving attempts works.

I see a nonce is a 32-bit number, so around 4 billion values to try. Also, I saw a famous mining pool having 500 Ph/s power at hand. And I found there one particular block solved in 40 minutes.

So, that is (40 x 3600) x (500 x 10^15) = 7.2 x 10^22 hashes calculated on that pool, to solve one block.

That means the nonces has been "cycled" 16763 billion times during those 40 minutes.

So I'm wondering what are those 16763 billion more things done after each nonce cycle? ("1 cycle of nonces" is going from 0 to 4294967295) ?

I see that we can change the timestamp at a certain proportion, and the merkel root hash also.

Aren't merkel hashes and timestamps more strict to calculate and use than nonces?

Those 16763 billion things are changes of the timestamp and merkel only? Can we have as much unique merkel hashes re-generated and timestamps changes as needed?

Can you give me examples? sorry if my view is a bit biased, I'm starting with this.

Jean F.
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Apparently, I've found that when the nonces have cycled (overflow), an extraNonce value is incremented, and that requires the Merkel hash to be recalculated based on that extraNonce value. a link here

Jean F.
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