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What is Zero? Getting Something from Nothing – with Hannah Fry



The Royal Institution

Is zero really a number? How did it come about? Hannah Fry tells the story of how zero went from nothing to something.
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Once upon a time, zero wasn’t really a number. Its journey to the fully fledged number we know and love today was a meandering one. Today, zero is both a placeholder, and tool, within our number system signifying an absence of a value, and as a number in its own right.

But it wasn’t always seen as that, and it still doesn’t act quite like other numbers. Can you divide by zero, for example? Hannah Fry explains how zero came about, from its origins in ancient civilisations, through the resistance it faced from the Roman numeral system, to being the cornerstone of calculus.

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41 thoughts on “What is Zero? Getting Something from Nothing – with Hannah Fry
  1. Clickbait title, video does not actually answer the question it poses, it simply gives a history lesson and then ends upon reaching the present day. Find your answers elsewhere.

  2. I gotta have a good day at work and the speaker boxes of ghost adventures season and the speaker boxes of ghost adventures season and the speaker boxes of ghost adventures season and the speaker boxes for am too tired and she teleport the cat food is dead in the water

  3. dividing any number by zero means that that number will never come in the multiplication table of 0, so the table will go on till infinity to get to that number. The answer is infinity for sure, concept or not.

  4. Whenever people ask why isn’t 1/0 infinity the answer always seems to be ‘infinity isn’t a number it’s a concept’. Well, isn’t maths as a whole a concept in itself? It just seems that people are bent on not getting infinity as an answer?

  5. then please why you are not able to count 0 As natural number rules saying ,could anyone teach me if the zero is not using in counting then why it is zero? or what is before 1?why we cannot call nothing as a zero? or what could we call to Space? everything that exist in world might be has a space before it or after it then what will call them?

  6. funny because i saw all of Hannah's arguments with peter atkins, and she denies the use of the trickster word nothingness, as well as the creation of math from nothingness like a meta-physician. Was annoying to me and my genius friends. Sorry i got the wrong Hannah…lol….

  7. This video tells us how the number came to be. It does not tells us what it is… the title should be “history of number zero” not “what is zero”… you still did not mention the answer to that question. What is zero?

  8. If you divide 6/2 you get three. Give six apples to two people and they eat the apples each. Let's say you want to give those six apples to someone who doesn't exist. How many apples will he eat, before all the apples are eaten? The answer is infinity, because the person who never exists will not be able to eat all of them, not in a million times. 6/0=infinity. He will keep eating forever.

  9. I was always astonished and fascinated about the miracles taking place all over the world but having no logical or scientific explanations behind, and that made me believe in the existence of God when I was a child. Since then, I feel myself slightly curious about spirituality and use to relate everything with that.
    When I was in my highschool, my first mathematics chapter was "Number System" and while studying it I've got a concept of "God". Recently, I was having a conversation with one of my anonymous friend on the internet and came to know that he is an atheist but I personally believe that no one is actually atheist, everyone believes but in various different forms and images., so I thought to share that concept with him which I'm going to share here..

    So., earlier, all that was known to me was that God or the Divine is something which is perfect, and while studying about numbers I found a number having properties similar to God. That number is Zero!! Let's understand this with a simple example, suppose I'm giving you 100 rupees then all you have from me is just rs. 100/- but you can buy some of the shares with that and make it to rs. 500/- or rs. 50/- or any other figure. But how 100 can become 500 or 50 as I've given you just 100..!? The answer is that 100 is not perfect, it is just a number like many others. But if I say that I'm giving you 0 rupees, then what you do have..!? The answer should be "nothing" but I've given you "something"!! So, 0 is something which doesn't have its existence physically but it does as it is the origin of the number system and no number could ever be possible without it no matters whether one believes in its existence or not.. I also think that this concept is somehow related to the Big Bang theory too, as it states that "Something was exploded when there was Nothing".. Well, by this way 0 can be related to God, but it should not be misunderstood that God is 0.. I would say God is something different actually., saying much more precisely, it would be fair to take god as the concept of "infinity ('∞')" as every number is contained by it. But it is much more complicated to understand as we all already know that it is something which is undefined and the word itself means that it can't be defined!., for this reason, proceeding further, I'm taking the help of a sanskrit verse of one of the upnishad (उपनिषद्) from yajurved (यजुर्वेद) to understand it much clearly:
    " ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदम् पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते |
    पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते || "
    ( "Om poornamadah poornamidam poornaat poornamudachyate.
    Poornasya poornamaadaaya poornamevaavashishsyate.." )
    Now, this verse tells that something would be taken as perfect if
    "when the whole is taken away from it, then also it remains as a whole.."
    relating this idea to numbers, we find that "zero minus zero equals zero ('0-0=0')" as well as "infinity minus infinity also equals infinity ('∞-∞=∞')".

    But this whole theory would be of no use if we leave it here only., in order to know God, now we know that one must reach to infinity but I guess we all think that it is impossible to reach there, as by proceeding one by one on the number-line we'll never ever going to be there. But there is actually a way to reach there, as we know that
    "any number when divided by 0 gives infinity ('x÷0=∞')"..
    Now, the point here is that we all are alike the numbers which are imperfect, but we all have a soul which can be related to 0 due to which every number has came into existence and the Divine can be taken as infinity and both are perfect. Now what we have to do is just to divide ourselves into 0 to reach the infinity.. Sounds pretty confusing I know but just try to think about it.

    : Adarsh (India)

  10. Nice video but incorrect. The Mayans/Olmec civilizations had a place holder value a shell. As it has been proven the Mayans performed astronomical calculations. These civilizations had this system down thousands of year BC. The evidence is in their pyramids, codices, etc. Recently, many scholars have agreed only the Mayans had the zero as a place holder and they had the concept down.

    What is general taught today is from an European/Asian point of view.

  11. Every number can have a corresponding relationship in the material world except for zero. It is impossible to have zero of anything. Even in binary computing systems it only implies a length of time between 1s.

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