Infinity

[Caesar]

A mathematician and an engineer are sitting at a table drinking when an attractive woman walks in and sits at the bar.

The mathematician sighs. "I'd like to talk to her, but first I have to cover half the distance between where we are and where she is. Then half of the distance that remains, then half of that distance, and so on. The series is infinite. There'll always be some finite distance between us."

The engineer gets up and starts walking. "Ah well. I figure I can get close enough for all practical purposes."

 

[Yellow Feathers]

A girl in my year 2 class
I left the school a year later

Hmmm... Year 3 drop-out eh? Rebel!

 

[Ed_Gein]

I like the idea that perhaps space is rounded. I mean, you travel in a straight line and at some point you end up back in the spot you started.

 

[Norwegian Blue]

And yes, there are different sized infinities. An easy example is:
The set containing all numbers. Infinite in size.
The set containing only even numbers - also infinite in size.
But the first set is twice as large as the second set.

You'd think so, but no. It's completely counter-intuitive but the Natural numbers (0,1,2,...), the integers (...-2,-1,0,1,2...), even numbers and odd numbers are sets of exactly the same size.

Even less intuitive is the fact the sets of rational numbers and algebraic numbers also have that same size. They're countable sets, in that you can "count" them off one at a time.

The real numbers, or any continuous subset of them, are a different order of infinity higher, called uncountable. There are other sets you can construct that are even more uncountable than the reals.

 

[Gasometer]

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Some other bloke also made the point that the universe is infinite and that somewhere out there, in the infinite universe which is itself but one of an infinite number of universes, there is a planet which looks and feels identical to earth and which has humans identical to you, everyone else and I, who look like us, talk like us, act like us, have our names, follow the same AFL teams we do, etc.

Feel free to add your 2 cents..

Where exactly do they look?

Is infinity up, down or out from the earth?

We always head out into space towards the edge of our solar system?

What happens if we sent a probe directly out into space to the north or south poles?

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