Mathematics

A longstanding question in mathematics that has puzzled countless bright minds throughout the ages  is the  twin prime conjecture. The conjecture, that some believe was first stated by ancient Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, says that that there is an infinite number of prime “twin pairs” - pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. These [...]

Physics and heavy metal may not have much in common, but Matt Bierbaum and Jesse Silverberg have found a connection. Both of them are graduate students at Cornell University – and both of them love heavy metal and headbanging. It all started when Silverberg, who really loves rocking out, took his girlfriend to a metal [...]

It’s a big day for math wizzez around the world – the largest known prime number has just shot up: (257,885,161 – 1) breaks a four year dry spell in finding new prime numbers. Prime numbers are numbers that can only be divided by themselves and 1. Going up from 2, the prime numbers are [...]

As a geologist, I tend to see the Earth as a dynamic setting, with all sorts of processes taking place; however, for me, 100.000 years is a really short period. For other, normal people, over the course of decades and centuries, the Earth is really static, with mountains and valleys seemingly anchored firmly in place. [...]

There’s a rather common image that might pop inside someone’s head when thinking of penguins – an entire flock of such animals, standing very close together, keeping themselves warm as they confront extreme sub-zero antarctic temperatures. Don’t be fooled, though. According to the results of a mathematical simulation that modeled penguin huddling, the penguins stick [...]

What’s halfway between 1 and 9? If you’re like most people, you’d answer 5 or 4.5 – which is fine. But if you take a 6 year old kid on the other hand and ask him the same question, the odds are he’ll answer 3. According to a recent study, the great majority of children [...]

You’re not the only that doesn’t like math, it seems. A new study from scientists at Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences found that biologists pay less attention to theories that are dense with mathematical detail. The scientists involved in the study compared citation data with the number of equations per page in more than 600 evolutionary biology papers [...]

Alan Turing is considered by most to be the father of the computer; the British mathematician had one of the most tragic fates ever suffered by scientists. Aside from defining concepts such as ‘algorithm’ and ‘artificial intelligence’, he also put up an idea that repetitive biological patterns are generated by a pair of morphogens that [...]

The Fourier transformation is arguably the most important algorithm in information technology, with immense applications as well  in optics, signal and image processing, pattern recognition etc. Thanks to this remarkable mathematical operation, we’re able to see videos or listen to music on an iPod, as it turns the digital information into readable frequencies. Recently, MIT [...]

A team of Swedish scientists paired with a USC researcher to crack the Copiale Cipher, thus revealing secret rituals and beliefs of a secret German society that had a fascination for ophtalmology. Thousands of old and obscure symbols filled over 100 pages of text which was found in Berlin towards the end of the Cold [...]