Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Le 03-janv.-07, à 05:24, Brent Meeker wrote (to Mark Peaty)
>
>> Remember that Bruno is a logician. When he writes "infinite" he
>> really means infinite - not "really, really big" as physicists do.
>> Almost all numbers are bigger than 10^120, which is the biggest number
>> that appears in physics (and it's wrong).
>
> It is wrong? What number are you thinking about ? (I'm just curious).
> A case can be made that 10^154 occurs in physics through the
> relationship between String Theories and the Monster Group. More exactly:
I was thinking of Weinberg's calculation of the energy density of the vacuum. Which is often referred to as the worst estimate in physics. I'm sure you can come up with bigger numbers based on more speculative theories. Didn't Leonard Susskind estimate the string "landscape" to have 10^500 local solutions?
But my point was just that mathematicians (and logicians) often mean something different than physicist when they talk about "infinite". Phyisicists usually just mean a number whose inverse can be neglected.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2007 - 15:58:35 PST