Consider the set of natural numbers N={0,1,2,3,…}. There is a countably ℵ0
Claim: ℵ0≠ℵ1
Proof: We
Consider some set X and its power set 2X. Let the cardinality of |X|=ℵ0
Define f to be some set function, which associates a subset of X to each element x∈X. x→f(x). To show ℵ0≠ℵ1, we have to show that there is no bijection between the set and its powerset (since ℵ1 is identified as the cardinality of the powerset of a set of cardinality ℵ0).
We give a proof by contradiction. Assume that a bijection f exists, and consider the subset of X which consists of all elements which are not contained in their image under f. Y={x∈X | x∉f(x)},(1) which means that: ∀y∈Y,y∉f(y).(2)
Now if f is a bijection, then there must be some ˜y∈X that is the pre-image of Y, such that: f(˜y)=Y.
Now we ask the question: “is ˜y∈Y? ”
If yes, then we get a contradiction with (2).
If no, then this means ˜yi̸nf(˜y)
and from the definition of the set Y in (1),
˜y should have been included in Y.
So we have a contradiction, and f must not exists.
On the other hand, we have the trivial injection g which assigns to each element of a set the set with the single element: g(x)={x},∀x∈X.
Therefore we have shown that there is an injection from X to its powerset, but there is no bijection, hence the cardinality of the set X must differ from the cardinality of its powerset. By definition, we call this next cardinality ℵ1.
There is a bijection between the reals (0,1) and subsets of the Naturals. Let r=0.r1r2r3r4 be some real numbers written in binary, where rj∈{0,1}. Now consider the set Sr⊂N, which corresponds to the number r. We define S to consist of all numbers j such that rj=1.
Note that there is also a bijection between the interval (0,1)⊂R and the whole R.
I want to thank Paul Raymond-Robichaud for showing me these results, concisely and cleanly.