Category: Paradoxes of infinity

Galileo's paradox is a demonstration of one of the surprising properties of infinite sets. In his final scientific work, Two New Sciences, Galileo Galilei made apparently contradictory statements abou

The Ross–Littlewood paradox (also known as the balls and vase problem or the ping pong ball problem) is a hypothetical problem in abstract mathematics and logic designed to illustrate the paradoxical,

Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel (colloquial: Infinite Hotel Paradox or Hilbert's Hotel) is a thought experiment which illustrates a counterintuitive property of infinite sets. It is demonstrated

Thomson's lamp is a philosophical puzzle based on infinites. It was devised in 1954 by British philosopher James F. Thomson, who used it to analyze the possibility of a supertask, which is the complet

Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides' doctrine that contrary to the evide

The St. Petersburg paradox or St. Petersburg lottery is a paradox involving the game of flipping a coin where the expected payoff of the theoretical lottery game approaches infinity but nevertheless s

The Banach–Tarski paradox is a theorem in set-theoretic geometry, which states the following: Given a solid ball in three-dimensional space, there exists a decomposition of the ball into a finite numb

Gabriel's horn (also called Torricelli's trumpet) is a particular geometric figure that has infinite surface area but finite volume. The name refers to the Christian tradition that (albeit not strictl