The following is an excerpt from Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, by Eugenia Cheng Mathematics can be thought of as many things: a language, a tool, a game. It might ...

In mathematics, infinity helps describe concepts that continue without reaching a final point. The sequence of numbers, for ...

The notion of infinity is fundamentally beyond the human ability to comprehend, but that hasn’t stopped mathematicians from trying. So just what is infinity, and why is there more than one of them?

This is what happens when you mess with infinity. You might think that if you simply started adding the natural numbers, 1 plus 2 plus 3 and so on all the way to infinity, you would get a pretty big ...

With infinity, we made a monster. Our minds demand that it should exist – only to rapidly melt at the consequences of a concept that is, by definition, too big for our brains. The pleasure and the ...

The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above and beyond mathematics as we know it WHEN David Hilbert left the podium at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on 8 August 1900, few ...

Last week, my first grader came home with thoughts about math (I love it when she does that!) She said that, since one hundred plus ten was “one hundred and ten”, that, therefore, infinity plus ten ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Reviel Netz: Something which is equal to some of its parts.

Mathematics is often about uncovering patterns. For example, certain areas of topology revolve around categorizing knots or geometric shapes, and number theory explores properties such as the ...

Mr. Wilkinson is the author of “A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age.” See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura ...