Infinity is not a number or a thing, but the idea behind many notions:
- No matter how high you count, you can always count higher.
- No matter how long you draw a pair of parallel lines, they never meet.
- If you start with a line of any length, you can divide it in half, then divide one of the pieces in half, and no matter how many times you keep repeating the process, you will always have another piece that you can divide in half again.
Our intuition tells us that these infinite things are theoretically possible, even though our experience, which is finite, tells us that it is impossible to demonstrate them in the physical world. Still, it is easier to imagine them being true than it is to imagine them not to be true. How could there be a “last number” when practically everyone knows how to add 1 to it? Where does this leave us, though, when we accept these truths that involve infinity? Does it make sense to have a number that is greater than the estimated number of particles in the universe, or to begin dividing a line into lengths shorter than the diameter of any particle known to atomic physicists? What if, in the vast unreachable universe that is larger than our senses can comprehend, parallel lines do eventually meet?
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