A question for all you über-geek math folks out there. It arises from a brief conversation this weekend with Daughter Number Two, and it's mercifully hidden below the fold in deference to those of you who are not math über-geeks:
Has anyone yet determined if
א1 = c?Just curious, I haven't heard anything new on the subject in years.
And no, I have no idea why the subscript is showing up to the left in א1, it's not that way in the post's code.
One to the X power?
One to any power is one. It will never be c, unless c=1, which is a trivial solution.
Posted by: mojo at April 9, 2007 07:37 AMuber-geek in other subjects here. I have yet to figure out how numbers add up to letters anywy. Or should I type this up as.. 172518-75511 914
Posted by: nulanne at April 9, 2007 07:40 AMThat's not an x....is it an aleph? It's kind of hard to see on my screen.
So not a mathgeek here...as I said, I'm a wannabee math geek and anything beyond matrix algebra kind of loses me...is c in this case the speed of light? (I'm a better quantum physics geek than I am a math geek)
Posted by: ricki at April 9, 2007 07:56 AMYes, It's aleph. I don't know the code for changing character size, but that equation is meant to be read "Aleph-one = c" (for continuum), which is the cardinality of real numbers.
Unfortunately, for some weird reason, MT is putting the subscript 1 in front of the aleph and I have no idea why.
Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at April 9, 2007 08:13 AMSorry, I leveled off at differential equations. To me, "aleph" is just the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. I barely touched number theory.
Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at April 9, 2007 08:21 AMIf you have access to a copy of Seife's "Zero: the biography of a dangerous idea" it may have references in it.
I vaguely remember some stuff like that being discussed in the book. It may not be high powered enough for what you want, but one of the references might be.
Posted by: ricki at April 9, 2007 08:45 AMThen Aleph-one must equal Q, since we all know that the continuum is Q.
Make it sew, yelled Captain Singer.
Posted by: Curious Feller at April 10, 2007 12:13 PM