When particle physicists try to model experiments, they confront an impossible calculation — an infinitely long equation that lies beyond the reach of modern mathematics. Fortunately, they can ...

How clans form and evolve within human societies has been modeled using a simple computer model developed by a RIKEN researcher and a collaborator. This demonstration opens the way to modeling complex ...

Most of us first hear about the irrational number π (pi)—rounded off as 3.14, with an infinite number of decimal digits—in school, where we learn about its use in the context of a circle. More ...

Four scientists debate whether math is an inherent part of the universe, or merely how our brains cope with - and explain - our environment. Math describes and predicts the world all around us -- from ...

Materials scientists lead a project to turn strong, light and compressible schwarzites from theory to reality with three-dimensional printers. The resulting materials share their properties from the ...

Halfway into his new book, “Our Mathematical Universe,” the M.I.T. physicist Max Tegmark describes his “Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde Strategy”: During the day he would do respectable work on mainstream topics ...

Mathematical truths are often born of the conflict between order and disorder. Mathematicians discover patterns, and, to better understand the mysterious forces at play, they look for countervailing ...

In addition to ascertaining that the internal vitality of the mathematical sciences is excellent, as illustrated in Chapter 2, the current study found a striking expansion in the impact of the ...