BBC Horizon 2010: 3/6 To Infinity and Beyond

By our third year, most of us will have learned to count. Once we know how, it seems as if there would be nothing to stop us counting forever. But, while infinity might seem like an perfectly innocent idea, keep counting and you enter a paradoxical world where nothing is as it seems.

Mathematicians have discovered there are infinitely many infinities, each one infinitely bigger than the last. And if the universe goes on forever, the consequences are even more bizarre. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many copies of the Earth and infinitely many copies of you. Older than time, bigger than the universe and stranger than fiction. This is the story of infinity.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• BBC HORIZON
• INFINITY
• MATHEMATICS
• GOOGLEPLEX
• GRAHAM'S NUMBER

[scottvska]

There is nothing scary about infinity.

[RJL738]

If you think about it if you go past the known notations Tetration, Pentation, Hexation, Decation and theoretical notations, Kilation, Megation, Gigation, Terration, Petation, Exation, you get so higher that you eventually need an exponent to notate the notation levels instead of numbers and they even eventually Tetrate...and Pentate, Heptate, Hectate through a higher level of Exponentation, Tetration, Pentation, Terration needing an exponent for the notation layers, Tetration and notation.

[gUdAaaaa]

Chuck Norris counted twice to infinite...

[abimiz1gmail]

i need to understand this part ...the biggest number if you keep counting you will get back to cero...some genius can explain me pleaaaseeee...

[bighands69]

@DickeyMoe1

Why not? There is infinite possibilities to infinity.

[BuFufilms]

hehe typo "eber" 2:48

[loltroll85]

@DickeyMoe1 beacause differnt infinitys have different properties

[DickeyMoe1]

Why are they trying to quantify infinity?