For a thousand years, infinity has proven to be a difficult
and illuminating challenge for mathematicians and theologians. It
certainly is the strangest idea that humans have ever thought.
Where did it come from and what is it telling us about our
Universe? Can there actually be infinities? Is matter infinitely
divisible into ever-smaller pieces? But infinity is also the place
where things happen that don't. All manner of strange paradoxes and
fantasies characterize an infinite universe. If our Universe is
infinite then an infinite number of exact copies of you are, at
this very moment, reading an identical sentence on an identical
planet somewhere else in the Universe.
Now Infinity is the darling of cutting edge research, the
measuring stick used by physicists, cosmologists, and
mathematicians to determine the accuracy of their theories. From
the paradox of Zeno’s arrow to string theory, Cambridge professor
John Barrow takes us on a grand tour of this most elusive of ideas
and describes with clarifying subtlety how this subject has shaped,
and continues to shape, our very sense of the world in which we
live. The Infinite Book is a thoroughly entertaining and completely
accessible account of the biggest subject of them all–infinity.
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