>
>>Mathematicians work with Infinity every day.
>
>They do not work *with* infinity. They use the infinite as a
>paradigm/platform for their mathematical theories. You can't
>work *with* infinity as it is impossible to quantify.
>

Dude, I was working with infinity in algebra and statistics when I was 18 years old. It's not a number you can plug into a calculator, but it is a very real and useful mathematical concept.

The first time I can remember having to invoke it in school maths was with the problem "If an object is moved half of its distance from me every second, when will it reach me?"

You cannot solve a problem as simple as that without consulting infinity. You write a rule for the nth iteration, then you draw a graph which shows the object never reaching me. This is high school maths. It's not controversial. I've studied a hell of a lot of maths in my life, though not as much as many of my friends, and I am quite confident that infinity is a troubling yet very real device which mathematicians invoke pretty comfortably.

No amount of bluster or confidence in your own (seeming lack of) education will change it.

You might find this edition of Horizon useful if you can get it over the pond:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qszch/horizon-20092010-12-to-infinity-and-beyond

Otherwise, I'd highly recommend the book A Brief History of Infinity by Brian Clegg. One of the best and most brain-bending maths books I've read in the last ten years. If you want to wrap your head around cosmology, you need to get comfortable with infinities.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-History-Infinity-Quest-Unthinkable/dp/1841196509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424724647&sr=1-1&keywords=infinity


>>
>>But you're the one putting 'eternity' into the mix - I
>>wouldn't have invoked infinity if you hadn't. Because of
>>infinity's irrational nature it completely ruins your
>theory.
>
>These last few responses have illuminated how little you know
>about the concept of infinity and mathematics. Too late,
>sorry.

:)

Your bluster at least broke my confidence enough to ask my best friend to assure me I wasn't being a complete dickhead. But no, a physics PHD from Imperial College London says you're waaaaayy out of your depth. Her speciality is light btw - you might enjoy one of her videos (it's largely unrelated to this, though she does have to touch on the same theories coincidentally - 'beam will spread and decrease in intensity over distance' - the same reason she can't make us a lightsaber is the same reason stars aren't visible into eternity) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9TEx_Z9uI4

She says that the Inverse Square law will most likely do it, but the most important bit is the distance from quantum interaction which will effectively scrub any information. That bit went over my head, I have to admit, but the end result is No, the Earth is not visible into "eternity".

If your arrogance won't allow you to trust me, trust someone with actual credentials. The Inverse Square rule means that stars are visible for billions of times further than people. Just like a lightbulb is visible for much further than an ant.

>
>>
>>"Recorded for a long time" wouldn't have got much argument
>>from me.
>>
>
>Yawn. Photon's do not decay.

I never said they did.

I said the density of them decreases over distance according to the inverse square law.

A star is so intensely bright that it takes a huge amount of time for the inverse square rule to render them invisible - currently the Universe doesn't appear big enough, so we can feasibly look back to the very earliest stars in the Hubble Deep Field. They were so intensely bright that their photons are still being received in great enough numbers to tell that they came from a star. They're feint, but they're together.

The Universe is young, however. I seem to remember recommending you John D. Barrow's Book of Universes a while ago (if you forgot, here's a reminder - it's EXCELLENT!) and although we can't be sure, it's likely that the Universe has way longer to live than it has already. 14Bn years is a long time to us. It's nothing to the life of the Universe. There is likely thousands of trillions of years left for the stars to get further and further apart. Eventually, the farthest galaxies will be so far apart that the density of light will have dropped to below the amount needed to make the image of a star.

Although the Heat Death of the Universe contains speculation, the inverse square rule does not. Stars can be visible for VAST distances because of the density of the light they emit. You emit NO light. You only reflect a very, very tiny fraction of the light given out by our Sun. The inverse square rule (and yes, the 'real' light physicist above agrees) means that due to the already tiny amount of light being reflected by your body and all the obstacles in its way before it can even get out of the planet (our atmosphere absorbs a LOT - that's why Hubble is in orbit!), you will be visible from a comparatively tiny distance.

It's not speculation, it's logic. Bright = more dense = longer to get less dense. Stars are just visible further. Same reason I can't see you from my desk, but I can see same Sun

Once you start bringing infinity into it (which you did in the title of the thread causing me to reply) it's pretty much logically impossible for starlight to be recognisable forever (you used the word 'record' - record involves being able to tell at lwould.east the shape of the object, right?), but absolutely *laughable* that a human, walking planet Earth would.



>
>>"Recorded for eternity" is flat out wrong.
>>
>
>You have no clue what you are talking about. Go ahead and
>crunch some infinity now. LOL :)

Enjoy the educational materials I've suggested, chap.