Does Buzz Lightyear’s statement "To infinity ... and beyond!" make any sense?
In order to answer this question we need to what is infinity. Infinity is something so big or large or long that it is beyond the ability of any human, besides Chuck Norris, to count to, or reach, or measure.
Then the next question is, “are there different sizes of infinity. The answer is yes, and there are three sizes. The smallest is the number of integers. The middle size is the number of decimals numbers larger than zero but smaller one. And the largest is number of irrational numbers. This comes from the German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918). He used his German intellect to put infinity on a firm logical foundation and described a way to do arithmetic with infinite quantities useful to mathematics. His basic definition was simple: a collection is infinite, if some of its parts are as big as the whole.
So there you go Buzz, you can travel beyond infinity if you know your decimals!
Bye the way, if there were “things” that were infinitely long or large, it would require an infinite amount of time to measure them so they would fall out of the realm of physics and into metaphysics
How interesting that in your 'About Me' section you choose to talk of your high school activities and say nothing of your PhD in physics or the last 30+ years of your life.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, infinity... it's so much more complicated than finite.
I'm thinking that's the point of going beyond infinity. It's impossible, yet Buzz aims for it. :)
ReplyDeleteAll of that metaphysics and mathematics stuff just confuses me. hehe