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- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!jvnc.net!nuscc!matmcinn
- From: matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr))
- Subject: The Modern Physicist in Calculus I
- Message-ID: <1992Jul27.054053.19462@nuscc.nus.sg>
- Organization: National University of Singapore
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 05:40:53 GMT
- Lines: 18
-
- TA: And here we have the graph of y = 1/x, x>0. As you can readily
- verify, this is a perfectly well-behaved, continuous, indeed, infinitely
- differentiable function on the open set (0, infinity).
- Modern Physicist [excitedly] Clearly, we have here a SINGULARITY!
- y=infinity at x=0. This is totally unacceptable!
- TA: As I said, the domain is an open set. x=0 is excluded. There is
- nothing remarkable about that.
- MP: Nonsense! Next thing you'll be saying that there is nothing
- remarkable about the SINGULARITY at the beginning of the Universe! Then
- you will try to tell us that time is defined on an open set, and that
- there is nothing remarkable about that either!
- TA: Quite.
- MP: No! Everybody knows that the prediction about the singularity shows
- that "GR contains the seeds of its own destruction" [tm]. And now I
- begin to suspect that the graph of y = 1/x proves that freshman calculus
- also contains the seeds of its own destruction......
-
- Moral: Time is defined on an open set. Spacetime has no singularities.
-