Surreal numbers are the real numbers plus infinity and infinitesimal numbers. Both of those are used by physicists when they reason about our physical universe.
I’ve never seen physics done with any sort of non-standard reals, let alone the surreals, which are a very specific, “biggest possible” extension of the reals..
Well, there’s non-standard analysis, where you actually have infinite and infinitesimal numbers, and there’s casual talk of infinite limits, but the latter need not involve the former. Normally it’s just a shorthand for the epsilon-delta type of argument that was worked out in the 19th century.
This basically means that they do appear from time to time, but they are seen as undesireable in the model and thus there’s a preference to model differently.
I’ve never seen physics done with any sort of non-standard reals, let alone the surreals, which are a very specific, “biggest possible” extension of the reals..
I have plenty of times heard of variables being infinitive in physics and I have seen people do calculus with infinitvely small numbers.
Well, there’s non-standard analysis, where you actually have infinite and infinitesimal numbers, and there’s casual talk of infinite limits, but the latter need not involve the former. Normally it’s just a shorthand for the epsilon-delta type of argument that was worked out in the 19th century.
Yeah, infinities are generally disregarded as “unphysical” is physics.
This basically means that they do appear from time to time, but they are seen as undesireable in the model and thus there’s a preference to model differently.
Modelling differently is non trivial. Infinities occur in the best models we have.