Content about “

energy

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Producing electricity securely, safely, reliably and cheaply has many challenges. Chris Budd explains that the answer to many of these issues is maths.

When the mathematician AK Erlang first used probability theory to model telephone networks in the early twentieth century he could hardly have imagined that the science he founded would one day help solve a most pressing global problem: how to wean ourselves off fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources.

Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees gives Plus a whistlestop tour of some of the more extraordinary features of our cosmos, and explains how lucky we are that the universe is the way it is.

What is light? Sometimes it seems wave-like and sometimes particle like. See how Einstein applied his theory of relativity to the problem, predicted that photons have no mass and laid the foundations for quantum mechanics.