Sunday, October 26, 2003
I saw a thing in a chatroom today that got my brain boggling a bit, especially since I'm no mathematician or physicist, so I figure I'll muse about it here, and see what people think. It's probably a very basic problem that's already been answered by some smarty pants, but I dont know the answer.So the question is this... is the concept of infinity a realistic idea? Is it provable?
The first and easiest response to that would be "Of course it is, you can always take a number and add one to it."
But wait.... can you?
Suppose you break the entire universe down to its most basic *stable* subatomic particles... be they electrons or whatever... just so long as they're stable. Now.. you use those particles to count, or calculate on... sooner or later you're gonna run out.
The volume of space may be constantly expanding, but the ammount of matter and energy contained within that space is fixed and finite... which suggests that it is actually impossible to calculate infinity... the time would come when you literally couldnt add one more, because there would be nothing left to calculate with.
Maybe that logic is flawed, but if it is, I don't see the flaw. So supposing the logic is correct and infinity is a mathematical impossibility, where the hell is the universe expanding to?
I invite your thoughts on this... when comments are fixed that is.
Steve 4:41 PM [+]
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