Christian Hettlage | Infinity: Measuring the Universe

Starting with a librarian measuring the size of the Earth and a philosopher trying to gauge the distance to Moon and Sun, the talk follows the story how, over more than 2000 years, astronomers managed to climb the cosmic distance ladder rung by rung. It illustrates how astronomers organised the first international science campaign for getting a precise distance to the Sun, how an astronomer in Cape Town for the first time could conclude how far away another star is, and why we know that there are galaxies beyond our Milky Way. This leads to modern cosmology with its stunning insight that the Universe might be infinite. The presentation concludes with a foray into what infinity means and how a deceptively simple question about infinity is linked to one of the most amazing mathematical insights of the last century.