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What Makes the Hardest Equations in Physics So Difficult?
The Navier-Stokes equations describe simple, everyday phenomena, like water flowing from a garden hose, yet they provide a million-dollar mathematical challenge.
In Praise of Simple Problems
The mathematician Richard Schwartz finds the hidden depth lurking in simple mathematical puzzles.
How Triangulation Leads to Knowledge
What does measuring distances in sailing and astrophysics have to with motion sickness?
Mathematicians Find Wrinkle in Famed Fluid Equations
Two mathematicians prove that under certain extreme conditions, the Navier-Stokes equations output nonsense.
A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life
Corina Tarnita deciphers bizarre patterns in the soil created by competing life-forms.
The (Math) Problem With Pentagons
Triangles fit effortlessly together, as do squares. When it comes to pentagons, what gives?
Mathematicians Crack the Cursed Curve
A famously difficult mathematical problem resisted solution for over 40 years. Mathematicians have finally resolved it by following an intuition that links number theory to physics.
Secret Link Uncovered Between Pure Math and Physics
An eminent mathematician reveals that his advances in the study of millennia-old mathematical questions owe to concepts derived from physics.
A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality
Edward Witten reflects on the meaning of dualities in physics and math, emergent space-time, and the pursuit of a complete description of nature.