This one has got me.
I’m reading a book at the moment that mentioned very briefly that some infinities are bigger than others. The book is unrelated and the author dedicated all of one sentence to the fact – but it’s blown my mind!
I’ve always thought (pretty sure I was always taught) that infinity just is. Something is infinite if it goes on forever, but how can something go on forever more than another?
I’ve tried to google but I’m just not grasping it. How is it that one infinity can be bigger than another?
In: Mathematics
If you look at the set of Real Numbers (all numbers that aren’t imaginary) vs the set of Natural Numbers (the countable numbers: 1, 2, 3, …), they are both infinite, but the set of Real Numbers contains all of the Natural Numbers and more (the set of Real Numbers includes non-integer numbers such as 1.273, as well as negative numbers). So they’re both infinite sets of numbers, but there’s more Real Numbers than Natural Numbers.
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