Supertasks and Numeral Systems

Rizza, Davide (2016) Supertasks and Numeral Systems. In: AIP Conference Proceedings. AIP Publishing.

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Abstract

Physical supertasks are completed, infinite sequences of events or interactions that occur within a finite amount of time. Examples thereof have been constructed to show that infinite physical systems may violate conservation laws. It is shown in this paper that this conclusion may be critically sensitive to a selection of numeral system. Weaker numeral systems generate physical reports whose inaccuracy simulates the violation of a conservation law. Stronger numeral systems can confirm this effect by allowing a direct computation of the quantities conserved. The supertasks presented in [2], [4] are used to illustrate this phenomenon from the point of view of the new numeral system introduced in [6].

Item Type:	Book Section
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies (former - to 2024)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Philosophy Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Algebra, Number Theory, Logic, and Representations (ANTLR)
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	24 Sep 2016 01:02
Last Modified:	09 Apr 2025 00:26
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60402
DOI:	10.1063/1.4965369

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