Do parallel lines merge at infinity

geometryinfinity

My school mathematics book says that parallel lines are always apart by a fixed distance and the lines never intersect.

The rudimentary explanation provided is that the tangent drawn at any point on the lines is always 90 degrees.

I can cross verify it by drawing tangents to the lines at small fixed points, but what I don't get is how the proof implies it to even hold at infinity. The infinity is undefined and I think it's possible for mathematical operations to glitch at this point, for example, a division overflow when you keep on increasing n towards infinity.

while (n++) terminates when a large N-bit register holdings the value n overflows and returns to 0, which means that parallel lines merge/intersect at/post infinity.

Best Answer

Parallel lines don't meet. Ever. That's the definition of "parallel" so it does not need any explanation.

One of the axioms (assumptions) of Euclidean geometry is that there are parallel lines. Since that is an assumption, it can't be proved.

There are non-Euclidean geometries in which there are no lines through a given point parallel to a given line, and geometries in which there are many.

Similarly, it's one of the axioms of the integers that they go on forever. The fact that some computer implementations of an integer data type can overflow is a property of the implementation, not the integers. And there are ways to manage integers as large as you wish in computer programs without having to deal with infinitely many integers.