From oxygen to octopuses: the surprising ways 8 shapes our understanding of infinity and why you might not want to live forever
Another Infinity Day Gone When Numbers Refuse to Behave and Left Us with No Answers
Yesterday was Infinity Day that one point in the year when we tip our hats to something so vast, so relentlessly uncontainable, it makes explaining quantum physics to your mates over a cold beer seem almost relaxing.
My good old historian friend Bill Petro quickly updated the community with a stunning story and inspired me to write this follow up piece to extend his points. If you are a history lover, you won’t regret following Bill Here’s an interview with him.
Bill handled the historical side of things, and I’ll take a crack at the scientific and philosophical. We’re both from older generations, those of us who grew up without the digital trappings that now surround us.
Back then, infinity was a concept wrestled with in dusty books and late-night debates, not something buzzing on a screen in your pocket.
This shift challenges us to rethink infinity, not just as an abstract idea, but as something that now intersects with technology, culture, and how we see our place in the universe.
What is Infinity really?
As a retired scientist, I’ve spent years, both in the lab and in the quiet hours of reflection, trying to wrestle with the concept of infinity.
The more I examined it, the more it slipped through my fingers. It’s not that the mathematics are beyond our reach; equations can describe infinity with elegance.
The problem is that the human brain is built for limits. We can measure, compare, and extrapolate but when faced with something that has no end, no boundary, and no final answer, our mental wiring falters.
Infinity doesn’t just challenge our understanding; it exposes the edges of it.
If you want to understand — or at least glimpse — infinity, step outside on a clear night and look up. Give it a few quiet minutes. The worries that seemed urgent will fade, replaced by a mix of awe and gratitude.
For some, that vastness is exhilarating; for others, it’s unsettling, a reminder of how small we really are. And yet, that smallness is only half the truth.
We are not just specks in the cosmos. We are made of its very elements. The universe isn’t “out there” watching us; it’s also in here, written into every atom we carry.
Do you want to live forever? I don’t any more.
Living forever sounds tempting until you realise Greek mythology already ran that experiment twice, and neither case got five-star reviews.
Poor Tithonus was granted eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth. The gods, never ones to offer a refund, let him age into a frail, whispering shadow until he became nothing more than a voice in the wind.
Then there was Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it tumble back down every single time.
Both tales prove the same point: infinity, when applied to a human life, isn’t an endless adventure, it’s a sentence.
In the context of Infinity Day, living forever without change is like reading the same paragraph on a loop. Limits, it turns out, aren’t our enemy; they’re the reason the story of life is worth turning the page.
Infinity isn’t just a mathematical oddity; it’s a concept that looks you in the eye, smirks, and says, “You’ll never fully understand me, but by all means, try.” It’s where numbers stop following the rules, paradoxes set up camp, and the human brain — mine included — occasionally short-circuits.
Before we wander too far into that endless horizon, I want to introduce a number that, while finite, seems to have an oddly special relationship with infinity: 8.
Chasing the Endless and the Elusive Eight
Now, don’t dismiss it as just the number of legs on a spider you’d rather not meet. Eight is a quiet overachiever, woven into science, history, faith, and even the geometry of the cosmos.
- In chemistry, 8 is oxygen’s atomic number — the very element keeping you upright as you read this. Without it, we’d all be flatter than yesterday’s open soda.
- In atomic physics, 8 is the magic limit for electrons in an atom’s valence shell — a perfectly balanced guest list for a party where no one overstays their welcome.
- In history and scripture, 8 crops up as the headcount of Noah’s post-flood crew — apparently the original maximum seating for a life raft.
- In religion, day 8 has ceremonial weight — from Jesus’s circumcision to the Jewish tradition of brit milah. Even sacred calendars can’t resist the pull of 8.
- In biology, spiders and octopuses own eight legs apiece, making 8 the number of agility, mystery, and the occasional reflexive “nope” from humans.
- In astronomy, our solar system officially has 8 planets, a neat set, unless you’re Pluto, in which case you’ve been demoted to “eccentric cousin.”
- In mathematics, 8 is 2 cubed — a tidy little power package — and, curiously, it’s the only non-zero perfect power that’s exactly one less than another perfect power. Number theory loves a good quirk.
- In computing, the byte — the cornerstone of our digital lives — is made of 8 bits. That’s right: your phone, your laptop, and the internet at large all hum along to an eight-beat rhythm.
- And, of course, tilt the number sideways and you get ∞ the infinity symbol, or “lemniscate” if you want to sound like a wizard from a Dan Brown novel.
Key Takeaways
So yes, infinity is grand and unknowable, but it’s also hiding in plain sight, in the shape of a sideways 8, in the oxygen you breathe, in the symmetry of nature and the logic of machines.
On Infinity Day, I like to think we did not just celebrate a mathematical concept. We were tipping our hats to curiosity itself, the kind that keeps us chasing answers, even when we know there’ll always be another question just beyond the horizon.
If you happened to miss Infinity Day yesterday, don’t worry — by definition, it will come around endlessly. In fact, it’s the one celebration you can be late for and still be on time, forever.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a coffee mug to refill. Infinity may be abstract, but my caffeine supply certainly isn’t.
I also have a young grandson who loves to shout, “Papa, infinity and beyond — let’s watch this movie!” It’s Toy Story, the one we’ve watched so many times that “infinite” hardly does it justice.
Yet every single rewatch reminds me that for him, infinity isn’t just a tricky math concept, it’s the boundless joy of a story that never gets old, no matter how often it loops. Buzz Lightyear may aim for the stars, but the real magic is in the moments we share right here on Earth.
Thank you for reading my story.
If you want to have a bit of fun and keep your mind sharp as get older, you may check out my new story about gaming for seniors like me.
How Gaming Gave Me a Second Youth and a Few Senior Moments Worth Laughing About
Why Gaming in Your Golden Years Might Be the Best Medicine You Never Knew You Neededmedium.com
About me
I am a retired healthcare scientist in my mid-70s, and I have several grandkids who keep me going and inspire me to write on this platform. I am also the chief editor of the Health and Science publication on Medium.com. As a giveback activity, I volunteered as an editor for Illumination publications, supporting many new writers. I will be happy to read, publish, and promote your stories. You may connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Quora, where I share stories I read. You may subscribe to my account to get my stories in your inbox when I post. You can also find my distilled content on Substack: Health Science Research By Dr Mike Broadly. I also do guest-blogging. Welcome to Substackmastery.com!
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