Articles

Outer space: The rule of two

Infinities are tricky things and have perplexed mathematicians and philosophers for thousands of years.
planets
Brave young worldsExtrasolar planets have been grabbing the headlines
Cracking codesIn the first of two articles, Artur Ekert takes a tour through the history of codes and the prospects for truly unbreakable quantum cryptography.
icon
Exploring the EnigmaDuring the Second World War, the Allies' codebreakers worked at Bletchley Park to decipher the supposedly unbreakable Enigma code. Claire Ellis tells us about their heroic efforts, which historians believe shortened the war by two years.
TsunamiThe tsunami of December 26th 2004 has focused the world's attention on this terrifying consequence of an underwater earthquake. Michael McIntyre explores the underlying wave mathematics.
Editorial, Maths education
  • Wisdom from above - An intriguing debate in the House of Lords on standards in maths education
  • Readers' corner - How many computers does the world need?
Outer space: Monkey business
Plus Magazine
Editorial

Einstein Year 2005
Ubiquitous octonionsMathematician and physicist John Baez declares himself fascinated by exceptions in mathematics. This interest has led him to study the octonions, and, through them, to find out more about the origins of complex numbers and quaternions. In the second of two articles, he talks about the characters of the different dimensions, beauty and utility in mathematics, and just why he likes dimension 8 so much.
Outer space: Racing certainties
Maths and art: the whistlestop tourMany people find no beauty and pleasure in maths - but, as Lewis Dartnell explains, our brains have evolved to take pleasure in rhythm, structure and pattern. Since these topics are fundamentally mathematical, it should be no surprise that mathematical methods can illuminate our aesthetic sense.