alt Hacker News> It very well could be an infinite number of atoms and then what?
Where I get stuck with this is how might we measure that? Continuous measurements and infinite measurements are not something we can make. We fit continuous theories to discrete measurements--and the good ones fit really well!--but until we can measure it how can we actually know? I concluded we just can't, and we have to be OK with that.
> We fit continuous theories to discrete measurements--and the good ones fit really well!--but until we can measure it how can we actually know?
Well, physicists came up with quantum mechanics because they found a way to distinguish a genuinely discrete phenomenon.
Understanding the physical universe overlaps with a subset of math. It shouldn't constrain the abstract tools which may or may not one day be useful for that understanding.