Pi Day and the Infinite Universe Theory

PSI Blog 20240314 Pi Day and Infinite Universe Theory

 

What does 3.14159… have to do with infinity?

 

Today’s celebration of math was invented by Larry Shaw, a physicist employed at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, which was founded by Frank Oppenheimer (J. Robert’s brother). It is a good illustration of infinity, as pointed out by Soumya Karlamangla of the New York Times:

 

“Pi has fascinated mathematicians for thousands of years, not least because it is an irrational number — its digits seem to go on forever without falling into a repeating pattern, a tantalizing glimpse of infinity. It is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and circles themselves tend to hold some mystery, as perfect shapes with no beginning or end, according to Samuel Sharkland, senior program director at the Exploratorium.”

 

Pi has been calculated to over 62.8 trillion digits with no end in sight. This is akin to what we get when we attempt to perform precise measurements in the real world. Per the Third Assumption of Science, uncertainty, it is impossible to know everything about anything. The infinite nature of the universe is why no two measurements are ever identical and why every scientific measurement has a plus or minus. It is why no two snowflakes are alike. It is why the counterpart to uncertainty is the Second Assumption of Science, causality (All effects have an infinite number of material causes). It is why Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle overthrew the finite universal causality assumed in classical mechanics and relativity.

 

Pi attests to the “irrational” messiness necessary for the universe to exist. A universe filled with Plato’s ideal spheres and Democritus’s ideal finite identical “atoms” could not exist. Events occur as the result of collisions. But the imagined collisions between perfectly and necessarily identical spheres would produce nothing at all. There would be no reason for identical aether particles to produce the complexes we see all around us as ordinary matter in our Infinite Universe. Today is the day to raise a toast to 3.14159… at precisely (sort of) 1:59 pm like they do in San Francisco!

 

Also, you will love this Pi, Pi, Pi parody of NSYNC’s rock song “Bye, Bye, Bye”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvW5uqzHDAo

PSI Blog 20240314

 

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