News

Plus Advent Calendar Door #1: I'm free... aren't I?
Are you reading this page because you decided to or because you were destined to from the start of time? Plus shares Mick's sentiment that we are free to do what we want, any old time. But what does physics and mathematics have to say about free will?
Quantum physics really is strange
A team of physicists have curbed the hope that quantum physics might be squared with common sense. At least if we want to hang on to Einstein's highly respected theory of relativity. Their result concerns what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" and it may soon be possible to test their prediction in the lab.
Mathematical fire fighters.... Siberia needs you!
Make your childhood dreams come true and join the Paris Fire Brigade as part of the 2012-13 Mathematical Competitive Game.
The chaos of sudoku
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Struggling to solve today's sudoku? Is your tried and tested method hitting a brick wall and you feel like you are going around in circles? New research might make you feel a bit better: you might not necessarily be stuck... perhaps you are just in a patch of transient chaos on your way to the solution.
Explore symmetry with Plus!
Tomorrow, 1st November 2012 at 4pm GMT, Plus will be part of a MOOC (massive open online course)! For an hour we will be talking about the beautiful subject of symmetry in a way that is accessible to everyone and there will be questions and answers too. This online talk is open to everyone and it's free.
The Travelling Salesman movie is coming to the UK!
We're very excited to be hosting the first UK screening of Travelling Salesman, an intellectual thriller imagining the consequences of solving the P vs NP problem. Get your tickets here!
The travelling salesman
The Travelling Salesman movie is coming to the UK! Get your tickets here and find out about the P vs NP problem.
Happy Ada Lovelace day!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day celebrating the work of women in mathematics, science, technology and engineering. To join in the celebrations we bring you a selection of our favourite female interviewees from the last 15 years.
How to make a marriage stable
How do you best allocate students to universities, doctors to hospitals, or kidneys to transplant patients? It's a tough problem that has earned this year's Memorial Prize in Economics.
Celebrating National Biology Week

The first ever National Biology Week is happening between October 13th and 19th 2012. It's organised by the Society of Biology and there'll be events around the country giving everyone the chance to learn about the second-most fascinating science (if you count maths as a science). But if you'd rather stay in and cuddle up with your laptop here are our favourite Plus articles on maths and biology.
A Nobel Prize for quantum optics
The 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland for ground-breaking work in quantum optics. By probing the world at the smallest scales they've shed light on some of the biggest mysteries of physics and paved the way for quantum computers and super accurate clocks.
Fractal photo finish
If you're bored with your holiday snaps, then why not turn them into fractals? A new result by US mathematicians shows that you can turn any reasonable 2D shape into a fractal, and the fractals involved are very special too. They are intimately related to the famous Mandelbrot set.