An examination of Infinity — in history and science — with excursions into literature and philosophy, written by one of the most successful writers of popular science. Infinity is surely the strangest idea that humans have ever thought. Where did it come from and what is it telling us about our Universe? Can there actually be infinities? Or is infinity just a label for something that is never reached, no matter how long you go on counting?Can you do an infinite number of things in a finite amount of time?Is the universe infinite?

  Deep human inquiry includes an adolescence of exciting discoveries, new formulas, and unusual predictions. As science has matured, our confidence in it has grown. We expect that science has answers, that its predictive powers are mostly accurate. But what happens when the science gets old? Oddly enough, it seems to have started trying to find the end of its own usefulness--its formulas "predict that there are things which they cannot predict, observations which cannot be made, statements whose truth they can neither affirm nor deny."

New Scientist is a weekly international science magazine and website covering recent developments in science and technology for a general English-speaking audience.

Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The peer-reviewed journal, first published in 1880 is circulated weekly and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership

New Scientist magazine is a weekly international science magazine and website covering recent developments in science and technology for a general English-speaking audience.