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Why infinity became mainstream

 , infinity has become mathematically mainstream, and most physicists and mathematicians have become so enamored with infinity that they rarely question it. Why? 

Basically, because infinity is an extremely convenient approximation, for which we haven't discovered convenient alternatives. Consider, for example, the air in front of you. 

Keeping track of the positions and speeds of octillions of atoms would be hopelessly complicated. But if you ignore the fact that air is made of atoms and instead approximate it as a continuum, a smooth substance that has a density, pressure and velocity at each point, you find that this idealized air obeys a beautifully simple equation that explains almost everything we care about: how to build airplanes, how we hear them with sound waves, how to make weather forecasts, etc.

 Yet despite all that convenience, air of course isn't truly continuous. I think it's the same way for space, time and all the other building blocks of our physical world.

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