Infinity is a player of great significance who appears on the stage only when the crucial questions of existence are raised. Infinity offers its services when we seek to know if the Universe began or whether it will ever end, whether life will always be part of its landscape, and whether there are tasks which can never be accomplished. Infinity challenges us to contemplate the duplication of ourselves and all that we hold dear, and to ponder the cogency of all possibilities, potential and actual. It undermines our sense of the precious by suggesting a randomly infinite universe will eventually conjure up the works of Shakespeare, somewhere, as if created by a regiment of monkeys armed with typewriters. Infinity also seeks to guard us from taking the wrong path in our quest to unravel the deepest of Nature's secrets about the ultimate structure of mass and energy.

John D. Barrow