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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mindcrime on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:22PM (#12270932)
someone will suggest, "Well maybe we don't really understand infinity". No, we understand "infinity" just fine. It's a concept that's clearly defined using a set of axioms that have been around for thousands of years.

I am not a mathematician, but my understanding is that a considerable amount of research into how to properly address /use infinity in math was ongoing as recently as the early 20th century. Not that I disagree with your overall point though.

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by lmkg on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:37PM (#12271039)
The word 'infinity' refers to a few different concepts in different branches of mathematics. Some of them have been well-defined and well-understood for a long time. The point named "Infinity" as a limit in analysis/topology (which I think is what renormalization is related to) is very un-mysterious.

Cantor's work in the early 20th century was on infinite objects in the context of set theory. That work is also fairly well-understood but starts to get a bit esoteric. More recent research goes further in the same direction, and then you start getting the point where you can't prove whether a certain type of infinity exists or not, because the existence of an infinity that large would prove that set theory is consistent.

So yes, research is still ongoing into the nature of infinity, but it's the nature of a different infinity.

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mindcrime on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:50PM (#12271106)
Fair enough. Like I said, IANAM. I just enjoy reading books like Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity and Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World. It's certainly a wildly fascinating topic.
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by vanderZwan on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:06PM (#12271534)
Is this related to that whole -1/12 business, which they talk about in this Numberphile video[0]? Because the video suggests it's ongoing work in mathematics and that it shows up in unexpected places in theoretical physics.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oazb7IWzbA

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by gohrt on Thursday August 11, 2016 @06:58PM (#12272277)
The Numerphile video has been debunked by everyone else in the math-popularization community: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/does-123-... (and also see discussion of that article on HN

The "-1/12" "mystery" is well settled math (but mathematicians are always looking for more elegant or general perspectives on things), and (standard-issue) sloppy notation in physics.

The only "mystery" is why people who should know better intentionally use incorrect terminology to dazzle lay-people, creating a mystery where there is none.

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by vanderZwan on Friday August 12, 2016 @04:32AM (#12274110)
Thanks for that follow-up!
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by lasfter on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:36PM (#12271027)
The issue is that there are different infinities. The infinity the parent is talking about, the one that you generally run into in calculus class and the like, is straightforward. The research in the past century was about what happens _past_ infinity, e.g. ordinal numbers.

I'm no mathematician either, so I'll stop there before I embarrass myself. The most accessible resource I found was this VSauce video [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by iammyIP on Friday August 12, 2016 @07:20AM (#12274676)
Regarding the video: The contraproductive and unnecessary use of pretty loud 'background-music' is pretty distracting and ruining this for me. It's a disregard for music and i view it also as a disregard me as a viewer, like it's assumed i wouldn't be able to listen to someone speak without the elevator soundsystem blaring around. They also do this on the radio when they tell you the weather forecast: of course only with loud music playing. And i then have to separate and throw away most of that audio info to get the information i want. Like everything wants to be a horrible rap song. I don't get it. This needs to stop.
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mindcrime on Thursday August 11, 2016 @04:21PM (#12271309)
That was a very interesting video, thanks for sharing. Now I'm going to be addicted to VSauce...
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by 77pt77 on Thursday August 11, 2016 @08:31PM (#12272745)
That video is surprisingly decent given the abstract nature of the subject.
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @03:56PM (#12271148)
As a theorist, theories in physics describe experiments and mathematics is the study of formal axiom systems. So if you want to reject the axiom of infinity, that is fine. If you want to have stronger axioms, like large cardinal axioms, equally fine.^1 However from experience, babbling on about truth in mathematics does almost never lead anywhere interesting.

^1 Basically large cardinal axioms give you additional types of infinity.

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mattmanser on Thursday August 11, 2016 @04:11PM (#12271257)
I'm guessing mindcrime's talking about Cantor and Godel and the continuum hypothesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis

I remember learning about them in the philosophy of maths, but have no idea if they have any consequences in Physics. And like /u/lasfter I'll stop there before I embarrass myself.

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @06:01PM (#12271922)
Probably, but in my view Godel's theorem basically states that there are limits to axiom systems. (In much the same way that you can not write a web server without touching sockets.) My point is, if it would be necessary to switch to a stronger axiom system than ZFC in physics, then one would do that, without claiming that that stronger system is real.
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by mattmanser on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:45PM (#12272531)
I honestly can't tell if this is utter gibberish or a real comment...
Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by yk on Thursday August 11, 2016 @09:29PM (#12272926)
Yeah, I should stop commenting publicly on an ongoing thought process, before I figured out how to communicate that thought :/ Basically I am drifting towards hard mathematical anti-realism and towards a rather minimal scientific realism. (And when I saw the discussion I jumped the gun...)