Chapter 0 Null and Void

Zero hit the USS Yorktown like a torpedo. On September 21, 1997, -while
cruising off the coast of Virginia, the billion-dollar missile cruiser
shuddered to a halt. Yorktown was dead in the water.

Warships are designed to withstand the strike of a torpedo or the blast
of a mine. Though it -was armored against weapons, nobody had thought to
defend the Yorktown from zero. It was a grave mistake.

The Yorktown's computers had just received new software that was
controlling the engines. Unfortunately, nobody had spotted the time bomb
lurking in the code, a zero that engineers -were supposed to remove
while installing the software. But for one reason or another, the zero
was overlooked, and it stayed hidden in the code. Hidden, that is, until
the software called it into memory—and choked.

When the Yorktown's computer system tried to divide by zero, 80,000
horsepower instantly became worthless. It took nearly three hours to
attach emergency controls to the engines, and the Yorktown then limped
into port. Engineers spent two days getting rid of the zero, repairing
the engines, and putting the Yorktown back into fighting trim.

No other number can do such damage. Computer failures like the one that
struck the Yorktown are just a faint shadow of the power of zero.
Cultures girded themselves against zero, and philosophies crumbled under
its influence, for zero is different from the other numbers. It provides
a glimpse of the ineffable and the infinite. This is -why it has been
feared and hated—and outlawed.

This is the story of zero, from its birth in ancient times to its growth
and nourishment in the East, its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its
ascendance in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics.

It is the story of the people who battled over the meaning of the
mysterious number—the scholars and mystics, the scientists and
clergymen—-who each tried to understand zero. It is the story of the
Western world's attempts to shield itself unsuccessfully (and sometimes
violently) from an Eastern idea. And it is a history of the paradoxes
posed by an innocent-looking number, rattling even this century's
brightest minds and threatening to unravel the whole framework of
scientific thought.

Zero is powerful because it is infinity's twin. They are equal and
opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The
biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and
eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and infinity. The clashes over
zero were the battles that shook the foundations of philosophy, of
science, of mathematics, and of religion. Underneath every revolution
lay a zero — and an infinity.

Zero was at the heart of the battle between East and West. Zero -was at
the center of the struggle between religion and science. Zero became the
language of nature and the most important tool in mathematics. And the
most profound problems in physics—the dark core of a black hole and the
brilliant flash of the big bang — are struggles to defeat zero.

Yet through all its history, despite the rejection and the exile, zero
has always defeated those who opposed it. Humanity could never force
zero to fit its philosophies. Instead, zero shaped humanity's view of
the universe—and of God.