Viability of foreverness

I can, indeed, I must, imagine only one thing being endless. Everything else is finite. That, however, is a description of my neurology: it seems my brain does not allow me to imagine the universe coming to an end. What could be on the "other side" of it? Indeed, the Universe may be the only thing that's unending. (That's for our set theorists to discuss) But I prefer the term, Eternal, which is not synonomous with values like Infinite and Endless; it can be a property of Now.

You seem to be imagining "endless" as being without an end...rather than as infinite. If it is infinite, shouldn't that "endless" concept go the other way also...as in"being without a beginning"...and "being without an indivisible component?"

Interesting point, but I guess I was thinking of endless as being without end (but perhaps with a beginning). To me the concept of "infinite" IS with neither beginning nor end.

Note that the mathematician who specialized in "infinity", Georg Cantor, ended up in a mental institution !

(One of Cantor's results was that there are different "infinities" in terms of "size". And regarding the application of "logic" to such ideas, Paul Cohen proved that there could be an "infinity" between two of Cantor's "infinities" and also proved there could not! For this, I think he got the Fields Medal, or some equivalent award).

Seems to me that if science is ever going to make significant inroads into whether or not our world is infinite (or an illusion of some sort) it will be done by looking inward rather than outward. We can barely see 13.5 billion light years away; seeing any farther seems almost an impossibility; and if this thing is infinite, 13.5 billion light years is sorta microscopic.

But somehow, seeking out the ultimate indivisible particle (or energy unit) could lead to more and more discoveries that such an indivisible unit is not possible; that going in regression is an infinite process; that there is no "end" on the "beginning" side.

Don't know for sure, but it does seem that working in that direction has more possibilities than the other.

In any case, just thinking about this stuff makes my mind hurt. Gonna hit the ball as hard as possible today to try to ease the pain. I was hitting it far for the first time in weeks yesterday...and I am besides myself with anticipation of today's efforts.

He shoulda taken up golf. Golf can ease all pain...and playing it almost immunizes you from insanity.

Can we say that PI, for instance, is an infinite value?
With enough decimals of PI we can calculate with great accuracy, but we cannot write PI as a finite number, even though it represents a constant ratio.

Pi is defined as an "irrational" and "transcendental number". Technically, although we cannot specify Pi as a finite sequence of decimal numbers, its "value" is not "infinite" but can always be specified as lying between an upper and lower limit. But that property is true of countless other irrational numbers (e.g the square root of 2)

Because of the ubiquitous nature of Pi in mathematics and science, it has gained something of "popular mystical status". The Wiki article on Pi for example notes...

There is a song called "the Pi song" on Youtube. I think the guy who plays it assigned a number to each note of a scale, and then "played Pi".

What I was thinking when I brought up Pi is that a circle is sometimes a symbol of infinity. An infinite line. So we have a number, with an infinite string of decimals, that defines something constant (ratio) about something which is in many ways infinite.

I've often wondered how far you'd have to string it out to find, say,forty consecutive "3"'s or how long it might take a modern PC to find it

I don't know about that, but here you can see 1 million decimals of Pi.

Such (logical and mathematical) THINKING can land me in an institution. But the circle has, because it goes nowhere and has neither beginning nor end, some significance for mystics like zen buddhists--and Nietzsche referred to time as circular in his potent notion of the Eternal Recurrence.

Cyr thank you for that link. I got 3 matches for 1111 but zero for 11111

Somehow intuitively unsound but of course don't know why, else wouldn't be intuitive

Maybe 'cause it sounds arbitrary: Someone might object, "Why not a sphere"