Is the Universe Finite or Infinite?

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Tony Padilla: "I just, I just, it's complete prejudice. I have no experience for knowing this" He says the idea of a universe which is compact and spatially compact seems more elegant than having to meddle with him with the infinite world. But on the other hand, infinity is a nice number in a way that 10 to the 120 isn't, right? So if we keep ourselves in the finite realm, then things feel a little bit, I just feel a bit cozier.

It’s a big universe we live in, so it comes as no surprise that big numbers are needed to describe it. There are roughly 10^22 stars in the observable universe, and about 10^88 particles altogether. But these numbers are nothing compared to some of the truly ginormous quantities that mathematicians have found to talk about, with inscrutable names like Graham’s Number and TREE(3). Could such immense numbers have any meaningful relationship with the physical world? In his recent book Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, theoretical physicist Antonio Padilla explores both our actual universe and the abstract world of immense numbers, and finds surprising connections between them.

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Antonio (Tony) Padilla received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Durham. He is currently a Royal Society Research Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. He is a frequent contributor to the YouTube series Sixty Symbols and Numberphile.

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