• Question: why do numbers go on forver

    Asked by ladybird117 to Cathal, Ciara, Emma, Michael, Sive on 16 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Michael Nolan

      Michael Nolan answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Hi ladybird,
      Numbers go on to infinity because you can always add 1 to a number to make it bigger or add a zero at the end. This process has no end, so we use the tetm infinity.
      There are some people who speculate on there being a biggest number and instead of going past it you go back to 1.
      The biggest number I hsve seen used is Grahams number which is so long thst there are not enough particles in the universe to write it out and itvis nowhere near infinity.
      Hope this helps
      M

    • Photo: Cathal Cummins

      Cathal Cummins answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      You can understand numbers going on forever in another way. Imagine the number line from zero to one: we can divide it in half, in thirds, in quarters and so on… in fact you can divide it in a thousand parts say but you can always divide it smaller into, say, a thousand and one parts… in this way you can always divide the number line smaller and smaller as small as you like… the reason why we can do this is precisely the same as why numbers can go on forever!

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