Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision.
So is mathematics invented by humans just like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered—always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found?
Whatever mathematics is will help define reality itself.
Most of mathematical activity consists of discovering and proving (by pure reasoning) properties of abstract objects. These objects are either abstractions from nature (such as natural numbers or lines), or (in modern mathematics) abstract entities of which certain properties, called axioms, are stipulated.
There are 4 types of math, algebra, geometry, calculus, and statistics and probability. Those are the four main branches.
When Albert Einstein first published the Special Theory of relativity in 1905, he was ridiculed. People thought it was just too weird and radical to be real. Einstein wasn’t sati...
Thirty-five years ago string theory took physics by storm, promising the coveted unified theory of nature’s forces that Einstein valiantly sought but never found.In the interveni...
Elon Musk has argued that we almost certainly live in a simulated reality. Is he correct? This documentary explores the philosopher Nick Bostrom’s now famous Simulation Argument,...
The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. Of the bodies that orbit the Sun directly, the largest are the four gas and ice giant...