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In space, do all roads lead to home?

Is the Universe finite, with an edge, or infinite, with no edges? Or is it even stranger: finite but with no edges? It sounds far-fetched but the mathematical theory of topology makes it possible, and nobody yet knows the truth. Janna Levin tells us more.

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Martian mayhem

In a major and expensive setback for NASA's Mars program, both the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander spacecraft appear to have been lost. Soberingly, while the fate of the Mars Polar Lander is unclear, it appears that the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost due to a simple mathematical error.
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Probing the pint

Australians have a reputation for being fond of their beer. Some Aussie scientists from Sydney are so fond of it that they've actually solved the age-old puzzle of why the bubbles in a glass of Guinness appear to sink rather than rise.
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The origins of proof III: Proof and puzzles through the ages

For millennia, puzzles and paradoxes have forced mathematicians to continually rethink their ideas of what proofs actually are. Jon Walthoe explains the tricks involved and how great thinkers like Pythagoras, Newton and Gödel tackled the problems.
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Editorial

  • New in this issue
  • Ever-increasing standards: a problem of communication?
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Doing the twist

Perhaps the most sinister weather phenomenon in the world is the twister - that dark, dangerous funnel drooping from the clouds that weaves its way across the landscape, leaving a narrow trail of devastation in its wake.