What is infinity and is it a real number?
Infinity comes up in math all the time but it seems more like an idea than an actual number. Can you do arithmetic with infinity? Is infinity plus one bigger than infinity? I've heard there are 'different sizes' of infinity, which sounds impossible. Can someone explain this without making my head explode?
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3 Answers
There's a great explanation of this on the HowStuffWorks website, and the NASA site has good material too if it's space-related. Both are written for normal people, not scientists, so you won't get lost in jargon.
Don't feel bad for not getting this right away. Some of the smartest people in history spent their whole lives on questions like this. The fact that you're curious enough to ask puts you ahead of most people. Keep asking why.
Be careful about 'common sense' here — a lot of science is counterintuitive. The whole point of doing experiments is that the universe often doesn't work the way our gut tells us it should. The Earth feels flat and stationary, after all.
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