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Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.
We talk to Stuart Johnston who uses mathematics to find out how noise pollution in the oceans impacts whales.
Generating electricity without the use of fossil fuels is not just an engineering and industrial challenge, it is also a huge mathematical challenge.
In this podcast author Coralie Colmez shares insights into her novel The irrational diary of Clara Valentine.
We talk to early career mathematicians who spent some of their summer holiday solving problems posed by industry — such as how to blend a perfect smoothie!
Don't like plant-based meat alternatives, but want to spare animals and the environment? There's hope on the horizon, aided by a good helping of maths.
Time is indeed a cultural construct. This is in part demonstrated by differing notions of time in different cultures.
Part of the strength of modern physics is that it has allowed useful mathematical calculation of some of what is entailed in passing through a wormhole. Part of the challenge is that this infrastructure provides restrictive overhead for properly understanding and moving toward a deeper knowledge. One obvious example for both of these comments is the apparent requirement of a physical process for creating a time travel machine, and for keeping the wormhole open.
The actual resolution of this matter may emerge from use of different mathematics and innovative experimental procedures. An attitude of open inquiry will be very important. Some time ago, as a graduate student in physics, I posited to a leading physicist at MIT that there might be two dimensions to time, or that time might behave differently than we think it does. He was outraged, and the conversation ended there, but now Kip Thorne and colleagues have done some of the work implied. So my hat is off to them. I think significant answers are just around the corner, and it will take considerable meticulous effort to get there.
Kip Thorne's work in the area has come a long way in very few years.
John Carlton-Foss