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Out of a Magic Math Function, One Solution to Rule Them All
...big 19th-century mathematics breakthroughs.” A Magic Certificate It might seem strange that dimensions eight and 24 should behave differently from, say, dimension seven or 18 or 25. But mathematicians have...
How Simple Math Can Cover Even the Most Complex Holes
...H.C. Hansen in 1992. And just a few years ago, the amateur mathematician Philip Gibbs, inspired by a blog post from the mathematician John Baez, proposed some new pieces to...
Color-Changing Material Unites the Math and Physics of Knots
Mathematicians have studied knots for centuries, but a new material is showing why some knots are better than others. One sunny day last summer, Mathias Kolle, a professor at the...
‘Amazing’ Math Bridge Extended Beyond Fermat’s Last Theorem
Mathematicians have figured out how to expand the reach of a mysterious bridge connecting two distant continents in the mathematical world. When Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in the...
New Math Proves That a Special Kind of Space-Time Is Unstable
...waves gradually diminish, or will they build into a tsunami? In 1986, a mathematician proved that de Sitter space-time is stable. A pair of mathematicians did the same for Minkowski...
In a Single Measure, Invariants Capture the Essence of Math Objects
...of many areas of mathematics, extracting essential features of mathematical objects and detecting when two objects are fundamentally different from each other. As the name suggests, an invariant is an...
The Tricky Math of Herd Immunity for COVID-19
Herd immunity differs from place to place, and many factors influence how it’s calculated. While much about the COVID-19 pandemic remains uncertain, we know how it will likely end: when...
James Maynard Solves the Hardest Easy Math Problems
James Maynard talks about why he’s obsessed with prime numbers. Tom Medwell and Jennifer Hsu for Quanta Magazine...
The Math of Social Distancing Is a Lesson in Geometry
...mathematicians, and exciting research is still happening today, particularly in higher dimensions. For example, mathematicians recently proved the best way to pack spheres into 8- and 24-dimensional space — a...