The Edge of the Universe - with David Deutsch, George Ellis, Sara Walker, Robert Lawrence Kuhn 

In partnership with Closer to Truth

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The idea of infinity may make us feel a little giddy, yet we refer to it frequently as if it is understood.  Mathematicians claim Georg Cantor cracked the puzzle in the 19th century and enabled us to understand and handle infinities. 

But is this perhaps a profound mistake?

The writer Jorge Luis Borges argued 'infinity is a concept that corrupts and upsets all others'. And now some physicists are arguing infinity is the greatest crisis facing physics, claiming that it generates nonsensical answers in quantum mechanics and undermines all prediction in cosmology.

Should we seek to remove infinity from accounts of the universe and rely on the finite alone?   Is the problem with infinity that it cannot be applied to the natural world, or with the concept itself?  Or is infinity a key insight into the character of the universe, however difficult it may be for us to comprehend?

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