Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept — And It's Ruining Physics

I was seduced by infinity at an early age. Georg Cantor’s diagonality proof that some infinities are bigger than others mesmerized me, and his infinite hierarchy of infinities blew my mind. The assumption that something truly infinite exists in nature underlies every physics course I’ve ever taught at MIT — and, indeed, all of modern physics. But it’s an untested assumption, which begs the question: Is it actually true?