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In the Universe of Equations, Virtually All Are Prime
...They’re the stars of countless popular stories, and they feature in the most celebrated open questions in mathematics. But there’s another mathematical phenomenon that’s almost as foundational, yet receives far...
The Year in Physics
...memory of a long-ago collision between the young Milky Way and a dwarf galaxy. “There’s debris everywhere,” said Cambridge’s Vasily Belokurov. The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws...
How Complex Wholes Emerge From Simple Parts
...gravity — that is, to reinterpret gravity in terms of particles that fit within quantum mechanics. Season two launched in August with a video about a mysterious mathematical pattern that’s...
Unscrambling the Hidden Secrets of Superpermutations
...math class. A permutation is an arrangement of symbols that uses each symbol exactly once: no repeats and no omissions. Permutations pop up all over the place: Anytime you arrange...
Smaller Is Better: Why Finite Number Systems Pack More Punch
...rich structure that mathematicians can exploit to solve problems related to everything from prime numbers to patterns in the solutions to polynomial equations. In 2003, the mathematicians Jean Bourgain, Nets...
Mysterious Quantum Rule Reconstructed From Scratch
...most celebrated attempts, presented by the American mathematician Andrew Gleason in 1957, shows that the rule follows from some of the other components of the standard mathematical structure of quantum...
How to Find Simple Treasures in Complex Numbers
...In the year 620, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta formalized arithmetical operations for negative numbers using a special sign, much as we do today. But to many European mathematicians, negative numbers...
Möbius Strips Defy a Link With Infinity
...by Olga Frolkina, a mathematician at Moscow State University, shows that one relatively well-known mathematical object can’t be packed an uncountably infinite number of times into an infinite amount of...
Where Proof, Evidence and Imagination Intersect
...history of defying expectations and forcing us to expand our imaginations. That’s one reason mathematicians strive for proof, not just evidence. It’s proof that establishes mathematical truth. All available evidence...