Math Coursework Y1 2017

From Infinity and Beyond

By:
Fredrick Charan Charles
Peter Moses Gan
Class 1.10 Andrew
Introduction:

Everyone has heard of infinity. It is a topic that no one can actually define. Many things
around us are finite but we still get glimpses of things that are infinite. For example in when
we see two mirrors facing each other, the reflection seems to be infinite and it goes on
forever and ever. Everyone says that infinity has no end. In that case is there anything
beyond infinity.

Children sometimes have this kind of argument:

Im right!
Im more right
Im right times a hundred
Im right times a million
Im right times a billion
Im right times infinity
Im right times infinity times infinity

However we know that infinity times infinity is no bigger than infinity. Is there anything they
can do to beat the other in this argument after one has declared that theyre right times
infinity? Thats why we decided to research whether it is possible to go beyond infinity and
what infinity truly is.
Background reading

The earliest recorded idea of infinity comes from Anaximander, a pre-Socratic Greek
philosopher who lived in Miletus. He used the word apeiron which means infinite or limitless.
However, the earliest attestable accounts of mathematical infinity come from Zeno of Elea.In
accordance with the traditional view of Aristotle, the Hellenistic Greeks generally preferred to
distinguish the potential infinity from the actual infinity; for example, instead of saying that
there are an infinity of primes, Euclid prefers instead to say that there are more prime
numbers than contained in any given collection of prime numbers.

However, recent readings of the Archimedes Palimpsest have found that Archimedes had an
understanding about actual infinite quantities. According to Nonlinear Dynamic Systems
and Controls, Archimedes has been found to be "the first to rigorously address the science
of infinity with infinitely large sets using precise mathematical proofs.

European mathematicians started using infinite numbers in a systematic fashion in the 17th

century. John Wallis first used the notation for such a number, and

exploited it in area calculations by dividing the region into infinitesimal strips of width on the

order of . Euler used the notation for an infinite number, and exploited it by applying the

binomial formula to the 'th power, and infinite products of factors.

In 1699 Isaac Newton wrote about equations with an infinite number of terms in his work De
analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas.
Methodology

During the June holidays, we decided on doing the topic of Infinity and Beyond for our
Mathematics Coursework.

Research: Firstly, despite our busy schedules during the holidays, we researched and
gathered up all the information we found and noted it all down in our own notes in the first
two weeks. We went through all sorts of sites such as wikipedia, google, youtube and even
buying some books for research purposes. We annotated the notes we had gathered and
compiled all the important factors and points for our project. The information we found was
enlightening and opened our minds to new concepts that we would have never have thought
of.

Discussions and planning: We called over google hangouts to discuss the coursework in
the third week. We did our general plan and wrote the main idea and summary in each
section of our layout through word. Once we were satisfied, we started doing the main work.
Final Coursework: We wrote everything from our plan in detail and in a format anyone can
understand. We had to rewrite many sections as they were either too confusing, not detailed
or too draggy. Once we double checked everything, there were still many things to correct
such as grammar and exact details such as dates and calculations. We went through many
drafts and finally came up with this finalised product.
If you add one to infinity its still infinity.

+ 1=
If we use some familiar rules of cancellation, this will just get rid of the infinity from both
sides, leaving
1=0

If you add infinity to infinity its still infinity

+ =
That is,

2 =
If we cancel out one infinity from each side we get
2=1

If you multiply infinity by infinity its still infinity

=
Divide both sides by infinity and we get

=1

Infinity definitely isnt supposed to be as small as 1. What went wrong? We manipulated

infinity as if it was an ordinary number.

A mathematician named David Hilbert created the Hilbert Hotel to explain infinity. This hotel
has infinite number of rooms unlike normal hotels which only have finite number of rooms. In
a normal hotel once it's full even if a another guest turns up you can't put them in another till
one of the the guests leave. But in a infinite hotel you can keep on placing guests in the next
after next rooms. So is it even possible to go beyond infinity? Or can you count up to infinity?

Infinities larger than other infinities

In mathematics, and in particular set theory, the aleph numbers are a sequence of numbers
used to represent the cardinality (or size) of infinite sets that can be well-ordered. They are

named after the symbol used to denote them, the Hebrew letter aleph .

The cardinality of the natural numbers is . The next larger cardinality is aleph-one( ),

then and so on. Continuing in this manner, it is possible to define a cardinal number
for every ordinal number , as described below.

The concept and notation are due to Georg Cantor, who defined the notion of cardinality and
realized that infinite sets can have different cardinalities.

The aleph numbers differ from the infinity () commonly found in algebra and
calculus. Alephs measure the sizes of sets; infinity, on the other hand, is
commonly defined as an extreme limit of the real number line (applied to a function or
sequence that "diverges to infinity" or "increases without bound"), or an extreme point of the
extended real number line.

is the cardinality of the set of all countable ordinal numbers, called 1 or sometimes . This

1 is itself an ordinal number larger than all countable ones, so it is an uncountable set.

Therefore, is distinct from . The definition of implies that no cardinal number is between

and . If the axiom of choice is used, it can be further proved that the class of cardinal

numbers is totally ordered, and thus is the second-smallest infinite cardinal number. Using

the axiom of choice we can show one of the most useful properties of the set 1: any countable

subset of 1 is greater or equal to 1. This fact is comparable to the situation in : every finite
set of natural numbers has a maximum which is also a natural number, and finite unions of finite
sets are finite.

Beyond Infinity?
As the ordinals keep going on and on will there ever be a way to go beyond all these cardinals?
Well we found out that there are such things called inaccessible cardinals. So no matter how
many infinite sets (alephs) we use we can never reach the inaccessible cardinals. Alephs are
considered as infinity and inaccessible cardinals are also infinities but cant be reached by
alephs. Do these cardinals and inaccessible cardinals prove that some infinites are bigger than
others? Yes. But then if all of them are infinities, can you count beyond infinity? Well as far as
mathematicians can tell there still isnt anything beyond infinity but some infinities can be larger
than others.