Where there is the Infinite there is joy. There is no joy in the finite. —THE CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD
This is the definition of the infinite: it is something that can stay the same size even when you subtract from it.
See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot.
The electron that scientists see in the laboratory-the electron that physicists, chemists, and engineers have known and loved for decades-is an impostor. It is not the true electron. The true electron...
Skinnerian conditioning, crossed with social pressure, is now an ever-present invisible hand that tries to manipulate all of your actions on the internet. This is the hand that is making you act again...
Zero dwells at the juxtaposition of quantum mechanics and relativity; zero lives where the two theories meet, and zero causes the two theories to clash. A black hole is a zero in the equations of gene...
In 1933, the Indian Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar realized that the Pauli exclusion principle had only a limited ability to fight against the squeeze of gravity. As pressure in the star increases, the Pa...
How could the vacuum, which has nothing in it, have any energy at all? The answer comes from another equation: Einstein's famous E=mc^2. This simple formula relates mass and energy: the mass of an obj...
Removing zero from the universe might seem like a drastic step, but strings are much more tractable than dots; by eliminating zero, string theory smooths out the discontinuous, particle-like nature of...
Christianity initially rejected zero, but trade would soon demand it. The man who reintroduced zero to the West was Leonardo of Pisa. The son of an Italian trader, he traveled to northern Africa. Ther...
Is no question that the vacuum has energy; the Casimir force is witness to that fact. But is it possible that the energy of the vacuum is truly the lowest possible energy? If not, danger might be lurk...
We tend to shy away from data that challenges our assumptions, that erodes our preconceptions. Getting rid of our wrong ideas is a painful and difficult process, yet it's that very process that makes...
The body, the house of the spirit, is under the power of pleasure and pain, explains a god. And if a man is ruled by his body then this man can never be free.
The Mayan system made more sense than the Western system does. Since the Western calendar was created at a time when there was no zero, we never see a day zero, or a year zero. This apparently insigni...
Not only does the media fail to challenge our preconceptions - instead reinforcing them as media outlets try to cater to smaller audiences - but we all are able to find small groups of people who shar...
Just as it's important to take the changing value of a dollar into account when comparing spending over time, it's important to take doctors' changing diagnoses into account when looking at disease tr...
In string theory, zero has been banished from the universe; there is no such thing as zero distance or zero time. This solves all the infinity problems of quantum mechanics.
In Cantor's mind there were an infinite number of infinities-the transfinite numbers-each nested in the other. Aleph 0 is smaller than Aleph 1, which is smaller than Aleph 2, which is smaller than Ale...
Further calculations showed that when collapsing stars are a little more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit, the pressure of the resulting neutrons-similar to the pressure of electrons-can stave off...
Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin andyang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The biggest questions in scienceand religion are about nothingness...