What are the INFINITY constants in Java, really?

Question

I just recently ran across the constants in the primitive type wrapper classes like Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY and Double.NEGATIVE_INFINITY. In the

Answer 1

They do indeed represent positive and negative infinity, which are clearly defined concepts in the IEEE floating point standard. For example, dividing a positive floating point number by zero yields positive infinity. As for the bit pattern itself, it is just a pattern that has been chosen to represent infinity.