this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
147 points (97.4% liked)
Science Memes
20272 readers
927 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Also isn’t an infinite dimensional sphere practically hollow?
(If you were to integrate the sphere to calculate volume like you do for lower dimensional ones, you would sum the volume of shells—which is just their surface area times a thickness—making it up. With infinite dimensions, each shell becomes infinitely larger than the preceding shell no matter how fine you make the slices. This means the largest shell contains basically all the volume.)
This reasoning is pretty weird, but the conclusion is basically right. That is, there is absolutely no way to extend the conventional notion of volume to Rinfinity, which is basically what most people would imagine is the infinite equivalent of our dimensional space. Edit: what I mean by Rinfinity is a bit ambiguous, but let's say for the purpose of a hypersphere we want something like l^2 hilbert space to ensure no vectors with infinite length appear, then we have a separable space and the proof is complete.
I imagine that most people don't have the faintest clue what you're talking about, though
At most, they know the chemical formulas for a couple of quartz species
Wait, I thought the volume of a sphere approaches 0 as dimensions go to infinity, no? Thr general formula for the volume of any nth dimensional sphere has the gamma function in the denominator, which rises faster than whatever is in the numerator. At some point (5 dimensions, iirc) the volume starts decreasing
Yes, but we aren't talking about the limit of the volume. We are talking about volume in actually infinite dimensional space.