For four decades, a quiet boundary in pure mathematics kept a powerful theorem locked inside the safe world of finite quantities. Now a new result known as Sebestyen’s theorem has pushed that boundary ...
A classic math rule now handles infinity. New work strengthens the math behind physics and unbounded systems. % ...
Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan’s formula for Pi can help with calculating black holes, studying percolation, or ...
Mathematician Per Enflo, who solved a huge chunk of the 'invariant subspaces problem' decades ago, may have just finished his work. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1974, five years before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter was ...
In 1655 the English mathematician John Wallis published a book in which he derived a formula for pi as the product of an infinite series of ratios. Now researchers, in a surprise discovery, have found ...
The laws of physics imply that the passage of time is an illusion. To avoid this conclusion, we might have to rethink the reality of infinitely precise numbers. Strangely, although we feel as if we ...
The question of whether the cosmos goes on forever is no longer just a late night thought experiment, it is a live research ...