Continuum

Mathematically, continuum can refer to the real line, its cardinality Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle 2^\aleph} , or any continuous connected dense linear order. Generally, when mathematicians say "the continuum", they are refering to one of the first two possibilities (context clarifies which one). The Continuum Hypothesis conjectures that the cardinality of the set is Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \aleph} .

The continuum is called so because it was the first (and most prominent) continuous set studied by mathematicians. No additional numbers may be added to the continuum (real line) without losing its dense linear order. Since the complex numbers add the imaginary number, i, to the real line, this is one reason they have no natural linear order.