What do you do after solving the mystery to life, the universe, and also everything? If you are mathematicians Drew Sutherland and Andy Booker, you go for the more challenging issue. The first to discover the answer to 42 were Booker at the University of Bristol, and Sutherland, the leading research scientist at MIT, in...
Credit: Pixabay What started as a bonus question in a high school math competition has led to an astonishing 10 new proofs of the ancient Pythagorean theorem. It has long been considered impossible to use trigonometry to demonstrate a theorem that is foundational to trigonometric principles, as this creates a logical fallacy of circular reasoning by...
Credit: Pixabay Breaking a Six-Year Drought in Prime Discoveries A recent participant in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has broken a six-year stretch without new discoveries in the quest for large prime numbers, among the usual composites. This new prime number has an impressive 41,024,320 decimal digits—it would take months to write out in full....
Credit: Pixabay You’ve likely used math to solve common tasks, like figuring out a restaurant tip or calculating a room's square footage. But how does math contribute to tackling more complex challenges, such as finding a cure for a disease? As an applied mathematician, I use mathematical tools to analyze and solve complex biological problems. My...
Credit: Pixabay Pi (π) is a fundamental mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Recently, physicists Aninda Sinha and Arnab Priya Saha from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) explored new perspectives on pi through their research in high-energy physics and quantum theory. Despite pi being an infinitely irrational number,...
Credit: Pixabay Recent research reveals that goldenrod plants exhibit a form of intelligence by adjusting their responses to herbivores based on neighboring plants and environmental cues, challenging conventional notions of intelligence. Goldenrod can sense the presence of nearby plants without physical contact, using cues like far-red light ratios reflected from leaves. When grazed upon by herbivores,...
Credit: Depositphotos Mathematics has many abstract concepts that are often difficult to grasp, but we assumed the meaning of 'equals' was well understood. However, it appears that mathematicians disagree on the exact definition of equality, which could pose challenges for computer programs increasingly used to verify mathematical proofs. This academic debate has simmered for decades but...
Credit: Canvas In high school math classes, play often disappears from the learning process. However, Kathy Sun is finding new ways to make math playful in high school. According to Sun, students usually focus on mastering procedures in math, rather than understanding math's broader contributions and community aspects. Sun, who is a researcher and professor at...
Credit: Canvas Movies have the power to change our minds, push our limits, and inspire us to aspire for more. It doesn't matter whether you are a student, a worker, or a boss; developing the habit of watching movies and series related to your field or area of interest can take you to the next...
Credit:Unsplash / Dan Cristian Pădureț. Carl Friedrich Gauss famously declared mathematics the "queen of the sciences." However, as history's renowned mathematician, he might have been slightly biased. Ask a physicist, and she might retort with the provocative analogy that "physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation." But regardless of whether mathematics wears the crown, it undoubtedly stands...
