The concept of infinity

If you ask a child what they think the biggest number in the world is, they’ll probably enthusiastically yell “one hundred!”

Now what if you tell them they can add one to that?

“Hmm… I think the biggest number is 1000 then!”

Then you tell them they can add one to that.

This can go on for a very long time, until the child realises that this can go on forever. They can keep adding one to the new big number, no matter how huge it is.

That’s infinity!

However, infinity is not a number. Think of it as an unbounded boundary to how far numbers can go. It doesn’t behave like numbers either: for example, ∞+1=∞ and ∞+1≠1+∞

There are many different infinities too. There’s an infinity of natural numbers, an infinity of real numbers, an infinity of integers and many more.

Infinity is weird. I’d suggest looking into it further if it seems too mysterious. A book which explains infinity and ideas about infinity very well is the book “Beyond Infinity” by Eugenia Cheng.

Let’s end this post with some food for thought: do you think that infinities can be in different sizes?