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Science

A Crash Course On How Infinity Works

Connecticut Public Radio | By Colin McEnroe,
Chion Wolf, Patrick Skahill
Published September 19, 2013 at 10:40 AM EDT
Rainbow Lyf
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Credit Chion Wolf
Ron Mallett is a professor of physics at UConn.

Infinity is weird. It's neither even nor odd. It's not a number. Really, it's just a concept we use to summarize that which we can't understand.

On today's show mathematician Steven Strogatz (@stevenstrogatz), author of The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, From One to Infinity, took us on a voyage through never-ending sequences from Greek philosophy to modern day power sets. We explain how infinity can be bigger than infinity (your brain will hurt) and then turn our eyes to the heavens with astrophysicist Ron Mallett.

Mallett took some time away from working on his time machine (I'm serious about this) to help us understand how infinity plays out in the cosmos - from the frontiers of space to the centers of supermassive black holes.
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Science
Colin McEnroe
Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.
See stories by Colin McEnroe
Chion Wolf
Chion Wolf is the host of Audacious with Chion Wolf on Connecticut Public, spotlighting the stories of people whose experiences, professions, or conditions defy convention or are often misunderstood.
See stories by Chion Wolf
Patrick Skahill
Patrick Skahill is the assistant director of news and talk shows at Connecticut Public. He was the founding producer of Connecticut Public Radio's The Colin McEnroe Show and a science and environment reporter for more than eight years.
See stories by Patrick Skahill

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Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.

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