The Infinite

Check out an article Cosmologist John D. Barrow wrote for the New Scientist (29 January 2005, Vol 185 No 2484), "How to do an infinite number of things before breakfast". If an infinity machine is possible, then all kinds of unprovable arithmetic propositions, or uncomputable problems can be solved in finite time.

In 1992, Jeff Xia of Northwestern University, showed that it might be possible to create an infinity machine. He took four particles of equal mass, arranged into two pairs with equal and opposite spin, in two parallel planes. A fifth, much lighter particle was introduced to move back and forth along a perpendicular plane through the mass centres of the two binary planes. Xia showed that the system of particles will expand to an infinite size in finite time. "These oscillations are performing an infinite number of physically distinct tasks in a finite time: a supertask."

Cool.

Posted by Timothy Washington on 2005.02.06| Original post

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