- Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
- It almost seems like a giant broom is sweeping the sands of western Africa’s Sahara Desert out of Mauritania and into the Atlantic Ocean in this MODIS image from May 6, 2002. Fires are burning in the savannas to the south, in (clockwise from left) Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea Bissau.
- Infinity (plato.standford.edu)
Infinity is a big topic. Most people have some conception of things that have no bound, no boundary, no limit, no end. The rigorous study of infinity began in mathematics and philosophy, but the engagement with infinity traverses the history of cosmology, astronomy, physics, and theology. In the natural and social sciences, the infinite sometimes appears as a consequence of our theories themselves (Barrow 2006, Luminet and Lachièze-Rey 2005) or in the modelling of the relevant phenomena (Fletcher et al. 2019). Mathematics itself has appealed to some form of infinity from its beginning (infinitely many numbers, shapes, iterated addition or division of segments) and its contemporary practice requires infinitary foundations. Any field that employs mathematics at least flirts with infinity indirectly, and in many cases courts it directly.
