Top 5 facts about Imaginary Math

You know that the square root of -1 is “i”, an imaginary number. But did you know any of these?

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes, if you want to describe the Universe you live in accurately, you need to go beyond conventional ways of thinking. In the early part of the 20th century, two revolutions in physics — Einstein’s relativity (first special, then general) and quantum mechanics — brought in the need for mathematics beyond what the real numbers could bring us alone. Ever since, complex mathematics, consisting of both real and imaginary parts, has been inextricably intertwined with our understanding of the Universe.

Image credit: Sven Geier of http://www.sgeier.net/fractals/index02.php.

Mathematically, when we think about numbers, we can think about a few different ways to categorize them:

• The countable numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. There are an infinite number of these.
• The whole numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. These are the same as the countables, but they also include zero.
• The integers: …, -3, -2, -1, 0…