John W Burgeson wrote:
> The following post was made to the Cliff Pickover LISTSERV and reflects
> more on what might be lurking in the infinite expansion of pi.
>
> "Pickover's book Keys to Infinity contains many thought-provoking
> insights into infinite sequences, including the digits of Pi. A truly
> random infinite sequence will have to contain strings of all possible
> finite patterns. Meaning, at some point in Pi's sequence, the string of
> "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8" will have to crop up, or any other sequence we find
> meaning in. Which leads to this mind-boggling thought:
>
> Is the entire binary operating system code for Microsoft's Windows 98
> guaranteed to be contained somewhere within Pi's infinite sequence? ...
>
> Cliff's question: "does pi specify every one of us -- the atomic
> coordinates of all our atoms, all our thoughts, all our memories. If so,
> then all of us are alive, and hopefully happy, in pi. Pi makes us live
> forever. We all lead virtual lives in pi. We are immortal."
An interesting thought. However, I don't think that there is anything
unique about pi in this regard. There are other transcendental numbers - &
in fact there a lot more (with an appropriate kind of comparison of
infinities) transcendental numbers than there are algebraic ones. We just
think of pi as special because it was encountered long ago in connection
with measurements of circles.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Dialogue"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 28 2001 - 20:49:35 EDT