A set of the six sides of a die matches up one-to-one with a set of red shoes, helping illustrate Georg Cantor's set theorem. Image courtesy of GBH/NOVA It can be easy to take math for granted. But ...

Albert Einstein famously said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe.” The notion of infinity has been pondered by the greatest minds over the ...

How many atoms are there in the observable universe? Current estimates point to a number we would write as 1 followed by 80 zeroes, or 10 80. If you peered inside each of these atoms and counted their ...

Several years ago, I tried to explain infinity to a class of fifth graders. In the story that I told them, I was preparing to eat a piece of cake when a friend walked in on me. Being polite, I gave ...

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the ...