What If Number Zero Disappears for a Day

 What does zero mean to you? Me? Well it was a familiar grade when I got myhomework back from the teacher! But, do you think it's just "nothing"? Yeah, me too until I realized what our worldwould look like if you took away zero just for a day! And if you like a good math challenge, stickaround till the end to help me solve the most impossible task out there! - A World Without Zero You might be surprised to learn that zerohasn’t been around forever. Yes, we used to live in a world without it! Well, an understanding of the concept of zero,at least. It was invented in India during the 5th century. And here, it’s closely connected with theancient culture of this region: Nirvana is what they call absolute calmness, the absenceof anxieties and desires! So, they came up with a circular symbol denotingthis "nothing." They called it "shunya." The image of zero itself symbolizes the lifecycle or, as it’s also called, “the snake of eternity.” Yes, for them, zero also meant infinity! (We’ll come “full circle” to this idealater on!) This new revolutionary concept was eventuallypicked up by the Arabs and included in their numerical system, which we all use to thisday. But why did it take humanity so long to understandsomething as basic as “zero”? Well, think about it: it’s not exactly somethingyou can observe every day. You can see those 3 birds perched on a treebranch or those 2 bees flying around your 1 can of soda. But zero? The absence of something? You never see it, never think about it becauseit’s not there for you to perceive! Yet zero is so incredibly important… – Life Today Without Zero We’ve come a long way since the 5th century. Like 16 more Centuries. Zero now has countless uses, and a modernworld stripped of this basic concept would look very different indeed… Your first thought might be that we couldno longer count higher than 9 or lower than 1. I mean, 10 has a zero in it, right? Sure, there would be no counting, but “no”means NONE! Fractions, like .804, are lower than 1. And 9.01 is higher than 9! The entire system of counting and measuringwould break down without zero. From there, you can say goodbye to computers! All your social media, online games, YouTubevideos – you won’t get to enjoy them in this zeroless dystopia. The foundation of any computer program isbinary code. And this code consists of zero and one. While you’re at it, forget about TV, chargingyour gadgets, reheating food in the microwave, even just turning the lights on! (Oh, wow, we’re already in the Dark Ages? That was quick.) Without zero, we couldn’t calculate electricity. No more Bond movies or cinemas for that matter. Movie theater projectors work by showing 24frames per second – you’ve gotta count that from zero! Hey, look on the Bright Side! Like we’re always telling you to! cNo morestepping on that scale and hoping the number will magically go down on its own! Clothing sizes and counting calories won’texist either! On that note, how will doctors do physicals? There won’t be an understanding of heightand weight. All that electronic equipment in hospitalswouldn’t work either. MRIs, X-rays, electrocardiographs – we wouldn’teven be able to count a person’s pulse rate! Without zero, there’d be chaos with transport. You wouldn't be able to fill up your car,speed limits would mean nothing – they measure how much higher you’re going than 0 mph,right? The Prime Meridian (that’s 0° longitudeon the globe) won’t be a thing, which means modern navigation goes with it. Without it, planes and ships will be rendereduseless. GPS – gone. How can it measure the distance between twoplaces without a starting point? It wouldn’t even get that far without satellites! Yep, they wouldn’t work either since theyuse binary code. If people can’t travel, then towns willbecome isolated. We’d probably even go back to horses andbuggies and paper maps! Hmm, looks like we could use another “cuphalf-full” example (although, can’t really measure the contents of that cup without zero!). At least your alarm clock will never ringagain! And you won’t need to go to work – schedulesand money now mean nothing! Oh, wait, but then grocery stores won’tbe able to stay open. Price tags, inventory, and, of course, thefreezers and refrigerators that store perishables! You’ll probably need to beef up your farmingskills and become completely self-sufficient because in a world without zero, entire economicsystems will cease to be! Modern mathematics, geometry, physics, andother exact sciences would disappear. In fact, we wouldn’t be able to measuretime itself! There would be no dates or years – you wouldn’teven be able to celebrate your birthday or know how old you are! And that brings me to my final point… – The Philosophical In numerology, zero is the beginning, thesource of all numbers – it practically symbolizes the root cause of everything. “Yeah, but what about negative numbers?” Hey, I hear you – and they go back fromzero! Without this oh-so critical starting point,you can’t move in time or numerology either way! Every atom, substance, and molecule in theuniverse came from something, and that something is zero. Time is measured from it, right? The universe started with a bang, and space-timehas been expanding from there. Without time, there is nothing. No planets spinning on their axes and revolvingaround stars. No constellations or galaxies. It all goes… Well, zero is a little more than “nothing”now, isn’t it? Of course, don’t expect any “zero apocalypses”to ever happen – this is all purely hypothetical! But even though the absence of this numberis downright terrifying, zero is still incredibly fascinating. To understand what I'm talking about, youneed to immerse yourself in mathematics! Like in a hot tub of math! - The Impossible Equation You can add zero, subtract it, and multiplyby it, but you CANNOT divide by zero. You might remember your math teacher stressingthat point, but did you ever wonder why that is? I mean, it works the other way around – youcan divide zero by another number. For example, you have 0 pieces of gum (yourpack’s empty – bummer!), and your 5 friends each ask you for a piece. That’s 0 ÷ 5, which equals 0! Everybody gets no piece of gum because therewas none from the start. But if you switch that around and punch 5÷ 0 into a calculator, what do you get? Error! It’s a little confusing, I know. So let's find out what’s so impossible andsenseless about dividing by zero with a fun little project! Grab a pen and piece of paper and draw a horizontalnumber line. The beginning of the line is zero, and thenit goes 1, 2, 3, and so on. Now you need to refresh some knowledge fromyour school days – namely, what inverse numbers are. These are two numbers whose product is equalto unity. I’ll explain with an example. Look at number 2. Its inverse will be one half: 1/2. The same goes for any other number: the inverseof 5 is 1/5, 6 is 1/6, and so on. In short, we divide the unit by the main number(1, 2, 3…) and get its inverse. It doesn’t matter what the original numberis – 2 vs. 1/2, 10 vs. 1/10, 500 vs. 1/500! – the inverse will always be closer to zero. It’ll never fall below 0, and it won’tgo above 1. As for zero, this inverse number equationwill never work with it! Now for my favorite part: The further any number is from zero (3, 32,192, 500), the closer to zero its inverse gets (1/3, 1/32, 1/192, 1/500). And the closer the inverse number is to zero,the further down this number is from the starting point (0) in our number line. Now imagine this starting point. Can you create the number whose inverse isequal to zero? Zero is less than any positive number, soits inverse should be greater than any positive number. Which number is greater than ANY number? The answer is infinity! This is why you can’t divide by zero. The result is infinity, which is somethingour brains just can’t grasp. Zero and infinity, two seemingly oppositeconcepts, come hand-in-hand and are equally incomprehensible. We might not entirely understand zero, butone thing’s for sure: we can’t live without it! Well, that sure wasn’t plenty of nothingnow, was it? Aren’t you happy we zeroed in on that. Aren’t you sick of these jokes? Hey, if you learned something new today, thengive the video a like and share it with a friend! And here are some other cool videos I thinkyou'll enjoy. Just click to the left or right, and stayon the Bright Side of life!