Thursday, March 6, 2008

Zeno a go go

The post below generated a lively controversy (see comments).

So now we serve up Zeno deluxe:

Consider a measuring stick. We have the segment from points 0 to 1 -- [0,1] -- which is a finite distance. Nevertheless, we can map the entire set of positive integers plus 0 onto this interval.

Now suppose we have an infinitesimal spaceship able to traverse each infinitesimal distance between n and n+1 at some infinitesimal speed. The ship would move at a finite speed from an infinitesimal perspective but that speed would be infinitely slow from our perspective. That is, an infinitesimal observer at point 1 would have to wait forever for the infinitesimal ship to cover the distance of 1 unit.

Now suppose we argue that Earth now is an infinitesimal object located at point 1. In that case, there could be a 0 point that is infinitely far in the past from our perspective but only finitely far in the past from the perspective of a "higher space."

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