Content
@
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Thomas
@aviationdoctor.eth
Is there *any actual example* of infinity in physics? I’m reading about Ramanujan’s summation method to assign a value to a divergent series (eg, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … = -1/12), and it seems to me that *every time* infinity shows up in equations, it’s nature’s way of telling physicists that their model is wrong
1 reply
0 recast
3 reactions
Andrew🎩🔵
@andsor.eth
the closest actual examples are electron's magnetic moment and some things from quantum field theory, but nothing hard proven yet 😵💫
2 replies
0 recast
0 reaction
Thomas
@aviationdoctor.eth
Could you please elaborate on the electron’s magnetic moment? I haven’t found anything that points to an infinity
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Andrew🎩🔵
@andsor.eth
not an expert, but early in calculations of the electrons' interaction with magnetic fields, integrals that point to infinity appear, and to deal with it, you'd use renormalization. interesting discussion on this here. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/395436/intuition-on-magnetic-dipoles-and-magnetic-moment
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Andrew🎩🔵
@andsor.eth
...integrals appear when you sum over all possible states/interactions of the electron with the quantum field, without imposing any upper limit -> simplified example vacuum energy
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Thomas
@aviationdoctor.eth
Thanks! Yes, my exploration is precisely on renormalizaiton to get sensible results that don’t blow up to infinity. And how physical results appear to be a subset of mathematical results constrained to a specific domain that excludes true poles / singularities (so, not Cantor’s flavor of math)
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
