Did you ever wonder if some type of life is too small to see the entire picture of what is around it? If I were to put a microscopic animal in a petri dish on my desk would it have any idea of what its surroundings were made up of? No, it would only know what is generally around it and I don’t know how much of that it could conceive. Could it be we are all microscopic animals when compared to the vast universe and even smaller in relation to the universe than the microscopic animal was compared to the dish and desk? I am certainly not the first one to ask this question. If the universe is infinite, which is a question we really can’t answer yet, even though some scientists say there is an end to it, could it be there are a range of sizes of living things which run from the microscopic or quantum world to infinity. Some scientists might tell you there is a size limit on living beings. They said the same thing about the size of structures in space and then they found a structure which was about four times their size limit. This made them collectively scratch their heads.

All through history scientific theories have fallen by the wayside. I know I have mentioned this numerous times, but it is a fact. Even when theories fit a situation perfectly some new avenue on that situation can be discovered which renders the theory inaccurate. Infinity may be the problem for almost everything. Infinity is the basis for a lot of debates by scientists. It isn’t only scientists who have a problem with this concept, so do philosophers, mathematicians and many others. I think the problem is the human brain was not constructed to understand infinity. It really wasn’t necessary for man to understand this concept to exist on planet earth and only came into play in religion in daily life. What I am talking about is the religious belief that we will live forever in heaven if we have been good on earth. Forever is just another way of saying infinity. So what exactly is infinity? It is a quantity greater than any number we could assign to it. If we said someone could life forever there is no number which would show us how many years forever is.

Can a person prove infinity exists? Some say we have the proof right in front of us. We can prove infinity exists by trying to solve Pi. We have never found the value of Pi no matter how many numbers we have carried out our calculations to. Does this mean Pi is an infinite number? Probably, but I think we may never be able to prove it, because no matter how far we carry out the calculation there will probably be more numbers to add to the result thus giving us a math problem that could go on forever or maybe only millions of years which in that case would prove Pi was not infinite. There is another proof for infinity and it is making a list of numbers with all the possible numbers there are. The list would never end and conceivably go on forever thus heading out to infinity. If infinity exists is there some way for us to harness it? Some scientists say quantum computing somehow will harnesses infinity, but I personally don’t see it. It seems to me if we gave a quantum computer the task of solving Pi it would still not be able to solve it and would continue to grind out numbers, but perhaps at a much faster rate than an ordinary digital computer. Even quantum computers are not suited for all types of problems.

If infinity exists does this mean someday we will find beings who live forever and can’t understand the concept of death? We know there are a few animals on earth which seem to have infinite lives. Let me tell you about one, it is called Turritopsis doohmil, but is commonly known as the immortal jellyfish. When it becomes sick or very old it reverses its aging process and returns to its polyp stage refreshing its cells and starting its life all over. This creature seems to have achieved infinity or immortality, the state where something alive never dies. What does this mean for the human race if anything? I think it means we will find someday a way to make the human race immortal, but it will take several hundred years, but before that happens we will be able to slow down the aging process. We will not achieve infinity for our life spans at this point, but we will be able to extend them.

If true infinity exists than there would be no end to the size of beings and no end to the size of the universe which then brings me back to an old idea. You know those Russian nesting dolls where there are six or seven dolls which fit inside one another? It could be we are inside a being so big we only think we are inside a universe, but we are actually inside his or her body and this enormous being is inside an even bigger being and doesn’t know it and so on. Could infinity be a basic part of life and we don’t realize it? In 2013 British scientists claimed they found proof the universe is a giant brain. They created a simulation and noticed as the universe grew the universe mirrored other networks and links between some similar nodes acted as junctions for many different connections, the same as our brain does. The scientists never suggested there was some incredibly large being we were inside of and we were looking at his brain, but who knows?

Infinity is an intriguing concept. To think something is never ending gives me a headache, because as I said before I wasn’t constructed to think this way, but when you do give it some thought it is possible to think about space this way even though Einstein said if we traveled long enough in space we would come back to our starting point. I think I have more of a problem with that thought. Even if infinity doesn’t exist in space, as far as humans are concerned it might as well, because to us space is a place we will never be able to reach the end of. It seems no matter how fast we ever travel it will never be fast enough to transverse the entire distance of space, so for all practical purposes that is our infinity. If there is a race out in space which is at an infinite distance from us, the very definition of infinite means we could never reach it no matter what we did. Right now this is no more than an exercise for our brains, but some day infinity could become a very important factor in our lives.