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a115ltd • today at 9:38 AM • 6 replies • view on HN

There is literally not one aspect of the universe that is provably finite. Not in any direction, not at any scale, not in any way you can think to look at it.


Replies

throw-qqqqq • today at 9:50 AM

Maybe I misunderstand you, but I don’t think I agree with that.

E.g. the observable universe is finite. Its observable age is finite. The number of known elementary particle types is finite. The number of particles within the observable universe is finite (according to the current understanding). Etc.

There are many examples.

Do we disagree on this, or am I perhaps misunderstanding your position here?

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lioeters • today at 10:26 AM

> There is literally not one aspect of the universe that is provably finite.

Or provably infinite.

youareundersell • today at 10:04 AM

I have the exact opposite experience. There nothing I can think of that is infinite in nature. Not only is it impossible to prove infinity empirically ("in the universe"; the only thing that actually matters) but there are exactly zero actual things with an infinite nature of any kind that I can think of. It's a useful imaginary construct that makes fancy math work, that's all.

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mr_mitm • today at 10:49 AM

On the other hand, every single observation anyone has ever made was a finite value of something.

Even when things are potentially infinite, there seems to be a conspiracy of the universe to make it finite. The size of space may be infinite, but due to a finite speed of light and the finite age of the universe we can only ever observe a finite slice. When attempting to zoom in to an infinite degree onto supposedly point-like particles, quantum mechanics makes everything fuzzy and finite again. Black holes appear to have infinite curvature at the center, but it's unobservable due to the event horizon.

This principle seems so natural that we even apply it in advance: In quantum field theory, there are infinities in the equations when done naively, which we deem so unnatural that we apply funny tricks which make mathematicians cringe, but they miraculously work out so well that we get theory and experiments to agree to an astonishing degree.

shiandow • today at 9:49 AM

Except you I suppose.

dist-epoch • today at 9:43 AM

And yet the vast majority of physicists treat infinity in the equations as a sign of them being incomplete, and dismiss the possibility of the universe being infinite in any way

I would like to point out that there is also no proof of God not existing either