Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Milton Sirotta

He gave the name to 10^100, or googol.

So, infinity. It doesn't exist. See, there is a finite number of atoms, planck times, or planck lengths in the universe. Infinity is an abstraction. It's a shortcut for arithmeticians to avoid the uncomfortable truth that our brains, the most complex structures ever discovered by humans... are not complex enough to master the physical truth of the finite universe.

Of course, it doesn't matter. If you can prove it by using infinity, it will work for all practical purposes.

It's still cheating, though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I knew it! I think infinity is harder to wrap your mind around than a non-infinity, for sure!