Music & Movies

infinity - the Alpha and the Omega

infinity is a mere concept and holds no relevance in the practical world......even though time relies on it

If I must define infinity into "countable" and "uncountable" am I not imposing a human construct on th ulitmate reality of infinity? and d, is it true that my inability to percieve or comprehend reality makes it irrelevant and impractical?

*Goes off to chat with Not I*

There are different levels of infinity. The most basic levels are countable and uncountable. Countable is something where you can...begin to enumerate all the members of the set: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...} = the natural numbers are countably infinite. Uncountably infinite is something where you can't even try to list all the members. Say we want all the numbers between zero and 1. Okay, there's 1.1, 1.01, 1.001, 1.0001, 1.00001, ... , 1.11, 1.011, 1.0011, ... , ..., ... There are 'more' numbers here than in the example of the natural numbers, even though both are infinite.

If that makes no sense whatsoever, don't major in math.

exactly - if you divide an object in half continuously you will never get to zero. If you did, then that object couldn't have existed in the first place. So in that sense infinity holds great relevance in the practical world. Then again, (as Ulirike said) if you started at zero and tried to count all the numbers up to 1, you would never get there. Yet, all solid objects are not of an infinite size... and then, you cannot count up to the final size of a solid object by starting from zero. In this sense, infiity is the beginning, and the end *quotes myself from above* "Infinity - the Alpha and the Omega."

Who is going to get bionicle 3? I will get it on the first day!

colonel720 -- The property of real numbers that you are describing is called "density". That is not the same as being uncountable. The rationals are dense; i.e. you could not list the rational numbers in order of size. However, you could make a countable list that contained all the rationals.

interesting...

i don't know bur everything at some satage or another is irelevant

My little brother is obsessed with bionicle...

what is bionicle?

I've seen the robot action figures, but I don't know if they're associated with a cartoon or what.