What is existence?

[palou]

Diablos1979 said:

palou said:

... that's not how math works.

 

2 things:

 

- There are, in fact, different , much bigger infinites (this is irrelevant in this case, though)

- "expansion" simply means that any 2 elements have, at limit, a greater distance between each other. This is fully possible, while staying within the same infinite subset of any metric.

I was not talking about math. In math infinity is abstraction, it's a concept, it's not 'real' because it can never be obtained, otherwise it would not be infinite.
In terms of physics (applying to our reality) nothing can be infinite. It doesn't mean you can't use infinity in physics for calculations, but it's just used in case a theory is insufficient to give a proper solution to a problem.

I really don't see why it couldn't. Relative to a non-fixed object, you can make it arbitrarily large, correct? In that perspective it would seem to be absurd if the universe were *not* infinite... Though, we are certainly both fully unqualified to give any opinion of any value on this topic.

 

Math certainly is the correct thing to use, as an infinite space is very much a mathematical concept. *If* the universe is infinite, what we could define as "expanding" certainly leads to no paradox. You are trying to disprove that the universe is "infinite" by treating it like a finite object, that's not how it works.

(The definition of the *smallest* infinity is a one-to-one mapping with the naturals. The most relevant property of an unbounded metric space, which is what I think we are talking about here as "infinity", is that, taking any object and real value distance, you will find an element with greater distance.)

 

 

There are plenty of mathematical infinities to work with, in real life. We do not live in discrete world, so, that is necessarily true.

(ex: it would require *infinite* energy to increase the velocity of an object with mass to the speed of light.)

Last edited by palou - on 11 February 2018