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An Italian economist says his flight was delayed after a fellow passenger saw him working on a differential equation and alerted the cabin crew. Guido Menzio was taken off and questioned by agents who did not identify themselves, after the woman next to him said she felt ill.
Pancomputationalism is a view that the universe is a huge computational machine or rather a network of computational processes which following fundamental physical laws compute (dynamically develop) its own next state from the current one.
A series of hidden texts written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being revealed. Until now, the pages have remained obscured by paintings and texts laid down on top of the original writings. Using a non-destructive technique known as X-ray fluorescence, the researchers are able to peer through these later additions to read the underlying text. The goatskin parchment records key details of Archimedes' work, considered...
2006-08-02
mathematics writing script ancient Greece ArchimedesLess than eight minutes after arriving at the famed attraction, a group of tourists visiting the Mount Rushmore National Memorial has made it clear they will not leave until at least one photo of every possible combination of people has been taken by every available camera, sources reported today.
2009-02-16
mathematics tourism camera permutationProbably the authoritative source for information on integer sequences, which arise primarily from combinatorics, number theory, and recreational mathematics. However, the often deep connections between mathematical patterns and those in the real world mean that numerous sequences can be identified in terms of physical or chemical phenomena, and most branches of mathematics are represented in some fashion.
The native language you speak may determine how your brain solves mathematical puzzles, according to a new study. Brain scans have revealed that Chinese speakers rely more on visual regions than English speakers when comparing numbers and doing sums.
2006-06-27
mathematics language sign glyph visualGrigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards. ... The Poincare Conjecture says that a three-dimensional sphere is the only enclosed three-dimensional space with no holes...
2006-08-22
mathematics Russia geniusPlus magazine opens a window to the world of maths, with all its beauty and applications, by providing articles from the top mathematicians and science writers on topics as diverse as art, medicine, cosmology and sport.
Excellent about the need for re-unification of mathematics and geometry, and physics. ... Also: Jacobi noted, as mathematics' most fascinating property, that in it one and the same function controls both the presentations of a whole number as a sum of four squares and the real movement of a pendulum. These discoveries of connections between heterogeneous mathematical objects can be compared with the discovery of the connection between...
1997-03-07
philosophy mathematics physics education geometryWhat's attractive about studying E8 is that it's as complicated as symmetry can get. Mathematics can almost always offer another example that's harder than the one you're looking at now, but for Lie groups, E8 is the hardest one. ... Each of the 205,263,363,600 entries on the matrix is far more complicated than a straightforward number; some are complex equations...
2007-03-19
philosophy mathematics physics geometry dimension complexityA study of medieval Islamic art has shown some of its geometric patterns use principles established centuries later by modern mathematicians. Researchers in the US have found 15th Century examples that use the concept of quasicrystalline geometry. This indicates intuitive understanding of complex mathematical formulae, even if the artisans had not worked out the underlying theory, the study says.
2007-02-23
art Islam mathematics architecture geometryThe Poincare Conjecture says that a three-dimensional sphere is the only enclosed three-dimensional space with no holes. But the proof of the conjecture has eluded mathematicians. ... If Perelman has solved Thurston's problem then experts say it would be possible to produce a catalogue of all possible three-dimensional shapes in the Universe, meaning that we could ultimately describe the actual shape of the cosmos itself...
2003-05-07
mathematics PoincareWe count in sets of ten. This seems natural to us because we have ten fingers. However the ancient Babylonians used different units, which is why we measure time in units of 60 minutes and clock-faces have 12 hours. We need not use sets of ten, any number would do. Mathematicians call this modular arithmetic. So we count in modulus ten. When perfect squares and modular arithmetic are combined strange and unexpected things happen. A...
2000-03-03
philosophy mathematics measurement decimal Fermat natureA curious observation is that primes occur in twins with a surprising regularity. For example: 11 and 13; 17 and 19; 29 and 31; 41 and 43; 59 and 61. Just as with single primes, the frequency of twin primes decreases as one gets to larger numbers. But do they completely fizzle out beyond some very large number? That is the big question. Around a trillion, for instance, only about one in every 28 numbers is a prime.
2003-04-04
mathematics prime number