The notion of infinity is fundamentally beyond the human ability to comprehend, but that hasn’t stopped mathematicians from trying. So just what is infinity, and why is there more than one of them?

NOVA: How do mathematicians define infinity? Netz: Something which is equal to some of its parts. That's really the technical definition. NOVA: Is there a difference between the mathematical concept ...

When mathematician Georg Cantor first glimpsed the true nature of infinity, it changed mathematics forever. He demonstrated that infinity isn’t just endless—it exists in different sizes, each opening ...

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 ...

INFINITY is a concept that is easy to think about, but hard to understand. Who hasn’t looked up at the night sky and wondered whether space goes on forever? Is it an endless expanse, or does it ...

Last week, my first grader came home with thoughts about math (I love it when she does that!) She said that, since one hundred plus ten was “one hundred and ten”, that, therefore, infinity plus ten ...

Important update, Jan. 17 at 18:00 UTC: There have been a lot of objections raised about the video mentioned below and the way I describe the math therein. It’s more than I can simply add or update ...

A statement can be true or false. But as Kurt Gödel demonstrated, there will always be mathematical assumptions that can ...

A starry firmament, or sand cascading through one’s open fingers, or weeds springing up time after time: the first conception of infinity, of the uncountable and the unending, is not recorded, but it ...