Zero - Charles Seife [90]
Suiseth, Richard
supernovas
Swift, Jonathan
Sylvester II, Pope
tachyons
tally sticks
tangent
Taylor, Brook
Tempier, Étienne
Thales
theories, beauty in
Theory of Everything
thermodynamics
Thomas Aquinas, Saint
time:
relativity of
space-time
travel in
timekeeping
see also calendars
time machine, making
Times (London)
Torricelli, Evangelista
transfinite numbers
triangle, estimating size of
triangular numbers
trigonometry
two-based (binary) system
ultraviolet catastrophe
ultraviolet light
uncertainty principle
universe:
Aristotelian model of, see Aristotle, Aristotelian doctrine
big bang theory of origin of
Earth’s position in
as eternal
expansion of
fate of
God as creator of
Hindu model of
as infinite
lumpiness of
size of
steady-state theory of
vacuum and
vacuum
energy in
infinite
and lumpiness of universe
see also void
vanishing point
velocity
escape
vigesimal (base-20) system
void
atomism and
Descartes and
in Hinduism
Leibniz and
see also vacuum
Washington Post
wave functions
wavelength
waves
interference in
Wheeler, John
Whitehead, Alfred North
wormholes
wormhole time machine, making
Yorktown, USS
Zeno
Achilles paradox of
zero:
birth of
as dangerous
division by
infinite, see also infinity
life without
multiplication by
origins of
as placeholder
roots of word for
starting counting with
transformation of, from placeholder to number
Western rejection of
zero-dimensional objects
zero-point energy
* The Greek word for ratio was (logos), which is also the term for word. This translation is even more rational than the traditional one.
* The early Babylonians were apparently unaware of the difficulty in trisecting an angle. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the narrator states that Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and one-third man. This is as impossible as trisecting an angle with a straightedge and compasses—unless gods and mortals are allowed to have an infinite amount of sex.
* This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. If the terms go to zero too slowly, then the sum of the terms doesn’t converge to a finite number.
* One dating system had the year 1 based upon the founding of the city of Rome, and the other was based on the accession of the emperor Diocletian. To the Christian monk, the birth of his Savior was a more important event than the foundation of a city that had been sacked by Vandals and Goths a few times—or, for that matter, the beginning of the reign of an emperor who had an unfortunate penchant for maintaining his menagerie of exotic animals on a diet of Christians.
* When a computer programmer makes a program do something over and over, he’ll more than likely make the computer count from, say, zero to nine to make the computer take ten steps. A forgetful programmer might make it count from one to nine, yielding only nine steps instead of ten. More than likely a bug like this was what ruined an Arizona lottery in 1998. In drawing after drawing, a nine never appeared. “They hadn’t programmed it in,” admitted a spokeswoman sheepishly.
* Tally sticks caused no end of trouble. The English Exchequer used to keep accounts on a variant of the tally stick until 1826. Charles Dickens told of the outcome of that long-outdated practice: “In 1834, it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? The sticks were housed in Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood by the miserable people who lived in that neighborhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they should never be, and so the order went out that they were to be privately and confidentially burned. It came to pass that they were burned in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, over-gorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Commons;