For infinity to have any meaning - if that is not oxymoronic - it cannot be written as a number even if it can be written as an expression, surely?

(Perversely, I like to imagine that infinity could be enumerated before the universe inflated by a factor of 10 to the sixtieth power in less than 10 to the negative thirty seconds and, ever since, infinity has been getting even bigger because of space expanding at some 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec (Mpc =approx 3 million light-years.)

Transcendental or what?

INFINITY..isnt finite
[number's ARE FINITE..]..
YOU..either have one..or none..
[or owe AN..other-one..or owe..THE other]

WN/QUOTE..<<..and, ever since, infinity has been getting even bigger because of space expanding at some 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec (Mpc =approx 3 million light-years.)..>>

we live iN AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE..[thIS IS]..RELATIVELY SPEAKIng..constanT

BUT..THE RULER/measure..by which we could expand ON,..THE CONCEPT OF EXPANSION..is expanding proportionately...as that being measured

IE..IF THE Me-asured and the measure..both expand..at the same degree of error..[EX-change]..the change..of MEASURE WILL BE UNNOTICED..THUS UNMEASURED.

BUT I SUSPECT..BY..the APPLICATION..of the measure of light..it..ISNT A THIRD DIMENSIONAL..lateral measure..as much as a space time uni-LATERAL..RE-direction..[thesis]..

IE..KEEP BUSY 'WERK'

The Expanding State
and the Bureaucratic Way
http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/expanding-state-bureaucratic-way/

Infinity = Been nowhere & going nowhere in no time. ;-)

This is a bit like the old story of the missing shilling.

: Three guests check into a hotel, and their bill is 30 shillings.Each guest pays 10 Shillings. Later, the hotel clerk realizes he's made a mistake, and their bill is actually only 25 Shillings. To fix his problem, he gives the bellhop the extra 5 Shillings to return to the guests. When the bellhop goes to the hotel room, he realizes that he cannot split the 5 Shillings evenly between the three guests. Since the guests are unaware of the total of the revised hotel bill, the bellhop decides to give each tenant 1 Shilling, and keep the rest of the money for himself. Each guest received their 1 Shilling, so now each guest has only paid 9 Shillings to stay at the hotel. This brings their total money spent to $27, while the bellhop kept 2 Shillings. By doing a little math, 27 Shillings plus 2 Shillings equals 9 Shillings. So, where is the missing Shillings ?

Dear Shadow Minister,

As I stated before I am in many ways a Math illiterate but Bender does discuss this. He talks about there being a infinity of diverging negative numbers and another of diverging positive numbers with zero being the great divide, probably for the very reason you have provided us. It will be somewhere in the 4 odd hours of his lectures I have been watching but I will see if I can find it again.

Dear WmTrevor,

Thanks for that figure. I have always wanted to know, if we removed the influence of gravity, just how much the moon would move away from the earth over the space of a year. I should be able to derive it form what you have furnished.

Dear George,

In referencing Creationists you make a very valid point and one that made me pause when I thought about it early on since I have been known to take New Earth types to task.

But then I realised the opposite could be easily applied. Mathematics like religion deals very much in the abstract and can become very divorced from the real world. The great Professor Feynman (I'm hoping you have heard about him) discusses the difference between the mathematicians and physicists far more lucidly than I could put here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw

So in a way it is you who is asking me to eschew reality for the abstract wouldn't you agree?

It is this aspect I have found to be so intriguing, and the tension between the two disciplines is something I would not have believed existed before now.

Dear SteeleRedux
Do I understand quantum theory no only at very superficial level, but I still think it makes sense as it is based on two fundamental principles. First that there is a limit to how far you can divide something and secondly statistics.

To clarify my argument the complete set of numbers in the series is minus infinity to plus infinity subtracting all the negative numbers from all the positive ones gives the result of -1/12. The mistake in the thinking was to take part of the whole set and assume it was equal to the value of the complete set. The principle that was obviously violated was when N is a positive value N+N+N... can not equal a negative number.

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2014/01/does-1234-112.html

Quote
¨We're leaving the post up for completeness, but it's just dead wrong. So don't waste your time. Read the correction instead. ~Buzz¨

Correction Below
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2014/01/redux-does-1234-112-absolutely-not.html

Dear SteeleRedux,

>> Mathematics like religion deals very much in the abstract and can become very divorced from the real world.<<

It is perhaps theology rather than religion that derives statements from a priori made assumptions about a non-physical world that might give meaning to the life of many of us, but is not as directly related to the “actual” physical world the way mathematics is, c.f. Wigner’s “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics. Hence an erroneous reasoning leading to nonsense in theology does not effect what we can know about physical reality, in distinction to a silly mathematical arguing, which does. As I said before, in religion you have to BELIEVE in God (and/or some basic tenets) in mathematics you have axioms that CLEARLY DEFINE the concepts what you want to derive things from. (ctd)