Name: Zero to Infinity
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NOVA

One of the oldest calculus problems, finding the area of a circle, can be visualized using a pizza. By dividing it up into ever smaller slices and laying them out next to one another, eventually you get something close a rectangle.

Finding the area of a circle is easy with pizza and infinity.

The Area of a Circle, Explained with Pizza

Area of a Circle, Explained with Pizza

In a thought experiment first proposed in the 1920s, the Hilbert’s Hotel has an infinite number of rooms and helps demonstrate some of the strange properties of infinity.

At the Hilbert’s Hotel, there’s always room for one more.

Thought Experiment: The Infinite Hilbert's Hotel

Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions. Discover the surprising story of how these key concepts that revolutionized mathematics came to be – not just once, but over and over again as different cultures invented and re-invented them across thousands of years.

Discover how the concepts of zero and infinity revolutionized mathematics.

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Zero to Infinity

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Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions. Discover the surprising story of how these key concepts that revolutionized mathematics came to be – not just once, but over and over again as different cultures invented and re-invented them across thousands of years. (Premiered November 16, 2022)

Harvey Mudd College

Discover how the concepts of zero and infinity revolutionized mathematics.

Physics & Math

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Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. What are the implications of these dramatic developments in the Arctic? Scientists and local communities alike are struggling to grasp the scale of the methane threat and what it means for our climate future. (Premiered February 2, 2022)

In the Arctic, enormous releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, threaten the climate.

Arctic Sinkholes

The top half of Jupiter in blue and green against a night sky

A composite image of Jupiter using images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

Explore the cosmos, delve into ancient history, and follow an extreme rescue with NOVA’s most-watched documentaries released in 2022.

NOVA’s most popular science documentaries of 2022

Four bright orange loops brand off of a dark blue blob

A transmission electron micrograph of HIV-1 virus particles (orange) replicating from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell. Credit: NIAID, Flickr

Scientists have cured a handful of people of HIV by piggybacking on treatments they received for blood cancer. But does that bring a widespread cure any closer?

Zero to Infinity

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Support Provided By

Explore More

The History of Zero | Zero to Infinity

4 mind-bending math experiments that explain infinity

Rethinking Science’s Magic Number

Largest Prime Number Ever Found Is 22 Million Digits Long

The Great Math Mystery

Prediction by the Numbers

Zero to Infinity

The Area of a Circle, Explained with Pizza

Thought Experiment: The Infinite Hilbert's Hotel

Zeno’s Paradoxes and Limits in Calculus | Zero to Infinity