What is infinity

With infinity we mean when something has no end or is limitless. The opposite would be finitude. Infinity is hard to imagine. Things can be infinitely big, but they can also be infinitely small. In mathematics , you use a special symbol for when something is infinitely large, namely an eight lying on its side. The infinity of time was often referred to as eternity in the past .

Although infinity is difficult to understand, a thought experiment helps a little: Let’s imagine we have an apple . If we cut it in half and eat one half, there will be left over. If we halve this rest again and eat half of it, then there is again a rest. This rest is smaller than the one before. You can go on and on like this. The leftover apples keep getting smaller, but there is still something left to cut in half. The process can never end, it is infinite. You can also see that you can eat an apple every time you cut it in half, even infinitely often. Still, you will never have eaten the whole apple.

We often use the word “infinite” for things that are not infinite at all. For example, if we have to wait a very long time for something, we are quick to say that it is taking an infinite amount of time. One would also quickly say that the number of grains of sand in a desert is infinite. But that’s not true, because theoretically you could count them all and would eventually come to an end. But then you would have a very large number as a result.

what is infinity times 0

The universe is perhaps infinitely large, but nobody really knows. In many religions is God infinite, because he had a beginning never and will never come to an end. In mathematics, we work with infinity a lot. For example, there are infinitely many numbers. If you divide 1 by three, the result is 0.33333 …, the three go on infinitely after the decimal point. Mathematicians know many such examples.