Trying to picture infinity

[hermunn123]

i dont like to think too much. it kills brain cells....

[Moppie]

Originally posted by hermunn123
i dont like to think too much. it kills brain cells....

Actualy it been proven that useing your mind is the best way to create brain cells when your still very young, and the best way to maintain use of your brain as you age.
Is you don't use it will Rot, and turn into a yellow waxy substance that oozzes out your ears.

[austin powers]

You can't picture infinity it's too big you stupid b@$%@&#. There is a number you can picture which is 23.

[gran turismo]

Originally posted by igor@af
He is ..um... how should I delicately put it... "mentally retarded"

good one!!I ran out of ideas

[hermunn123]

Is you don't use it will Rot, and turn into a yellow waxy substance that oozzes out your ears.

coooool....

i was actually just joking

[olds88]

infinity hmmmmm the only thing i can think of is the empty space inbetween my ears

[Twist]

I don't think its possible for the human mind to picture infiniti, but if you want to get some idea of inifiniti try this:

1) Get in front of a mirror
2) Grab another mirror and hold it in front of mirror 1
3) Look into mirror one so that you can see mirror 2
4) Look into semi-infiniti
* note: effect only works for a finite distance, but the effect is cool nevertheless....

If this doesn't make sense, tell me and i'll try to clarify...

[Lizard King]

If you can only see for a finite distance then its hardly infinity.

I know what you mean though. Mirrors are cool, especially when they're on the floor and you walk on them.

[olds88]

Originally posted by Lizard King
If you can only see for a finite distance then its hardly infinity.

I know what you mean though. Mirrors are cool, especially when they're on the floor and you walk on them.

ahh you just like mirrored floors when the hot girls with skirts and no panties show up

[jinushaun]

Let's not delve on infinity for too long, too many mathematicians go insane trying to explain and describe it.

[AEstud]

The "human race" has to finite of a mind and it is also to narrow to even come close to comprehending infinity no matter how smart you may be.

[blatch]

here. look at a grain of sand. then think about that, zoomed out 10 times. then zoom out another 10x. Keep doing this forever.

[91HBSi]

Originally posted by blatch
here. look at a grain of sand. then think about that, zoomed out 10 times. then zoom out another 10x. Keep doing this forever.

WHY?!?

[ric]

the human mind is to 3 dimensional to understand infinity let alone know what it is. it truely is beyond our power and scope at this level of evolution so all we can do is guess what it really is.

there are actually many theorized forms of infinity though, like the infinity symbol (1 dimensional), or a simple sphere (3 dimensional), or the attempt to explain a given amount of space in contrast to a starting and ending point (depth dependant), or space as a whole (multidimensional).


infinity is actually my basis for a belief in a higher power although i wont go into that.

[fritz_269]

Originally posted by igor@af
and have you ever thought there may be more than 1 infinity??

There are. A lot of them in fact. At least to mathematicians. They call infinity "aleph" (the greek letter "A"). The different infinities actually have different sizes (some are just more infinite than others) mathematicians call this its "cardinality":

aleph naught (or aleph zero, cardinality zero, the smallest infinity - aka "countable infinity", example: "How many Integer numbers are there?")

aleph one (a larger infinity, cardinality one - aka "uncountable infinity", example: "How many Real numbers are there?"

You can see how aleph one must be larger than aleph naught from the examples. There are an infinite number of real numbers between each two integers. If there are aleph naught integers, there are infinitely more reals (aka aleph one)!

It turns out that you can keep constructing larger and larger cardinalities of infinities, the next would be aleph two, then aleph three, etc. Here's the kicker - according to Cantor's continuum hypothesis, there are aleph one number of possible alephs. This has never been proven, but is generally accepted as it seems to work well -- there are an uncountable infinite number of sizes of infinity!


But that's all just in theory, AFAIK, there is nothing in our reality that is truly infinite. The current universe isn't infinitely large nor infinitely old, you can't chop matter up into infinite bits nor can you keep subdividing time infinitely. Everything is quantized. Not necessarily accurately measureable, but quantized.

Infinity is a fun game, and really useful when you want to represent relatively large numbers in math instead of carrying all those zeros around. But it's true meaning is quite limited.
:smoker2:

PS> Here's another kick in the pants - Godel proved that Cantor's continuum hypothesis can be neither proved nor disproved!!! Funky, eh? :huh:

Even as the finite encloses an infinite series
And in the unlimited limits appear,
So the soul of immensity dwells in minuta
And in the narrowest limits, no limits inhere
What joy to discern the minute in infinity!
The vast to perceive in the small, what Divinity!

– Jakob Bernoulli