Here’s our annual round-up of what’s happening in sums/thinking at this year’s Manchester Science Festival. If you’re local, or will be in the area around 20th-30th October, here’s our picks of the finest number-based shows, talks and events.
You're reading: Posts By Katie Steckles
Puzzlebomb – October 2016
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 58 of Puzzlebomb, for October 2016, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 58 – October 2016 (printer-friendly version)
The solutions to Issue 58 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Solutions 58 – October 2016 (printer-friendly version)
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Best way to explain topology: now officially ‘using baked goods’
Nobel Prize news!
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to a trio of physicists: Michael Kosterlitz, Duncan Haldane and David Thouless, “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”.
And here’s the maths angle – their work is in the field of topological physics, which relates strange matter (superconductors, superfluids and the like) to topology, via the interesting way the properties of the materials change in phases, like the different fundamental shapes of objects in topology. None of the material we’ve taken a cursory glance at so far yields a simple explanation of how these two things are linked, but they have explanatory PDFs on the Nobel website if you’d like a dig around: Popular (PDF) and Advanced (PDF).
Also, impressively many newspaper headlines seem to have failed to notice that ‘strange matter’ is actually a thing in physics, and consequently mangled it in their explanations.
Cue of course an amazing press conference in which Nobel Committee for Physics member Thors Hans Hansson holds up a bun, a bagel and a pretzel to explain the difference. Classic topology.
More information
British scientists win Nobel prize in physics for work so baffling it had to be described using bagels, at The Telegraph (bonus points for ‘Noble prize’ typo, if it’s not been corrected yet)
Physics prize explanations on the Nobel website: Popular (PDF) and Advanced (PDF)
New Twin Primes found
Collaborative prime number searching website PrimeGrid has announced its most recent discovery: on 14th September, user Tom Greer discovered a new pair of twin primes (primes which differ by 2), namely:
\[2996863034895 \times 2^{1290000} \pm 1\]
Found using PrimeGrid’s Sophie Germain Prime search, the new discoveries are 388,342 digits long, smashing the previous twin prime record of 200,700 digits.
PrimeGrid is a collaborative project (similar to GIMPS, which searches for specifically Mersenne Primes) in which anyone who downloads their software can donate their unused CPU time to prime searching. It’s been the source of many recent prime number discoveries, including several in the last few months which rank in the top 160 largest known primes.
The University of Tennessee Martin’s Chris Caldwell maintains a database of the largest known primes, to which the new discovery has been added.
Further Reading
Press release from PrimeGrid (PDF)
The List of Largest Known Primes
PrimeGrid website
The new twin primes’ entries on the List of Largest Known Primes: n+1, n-1
Carnival of Mathematics 138
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of August, and compiled by Yen Duong, is now online at Baking and Math.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Puzzlebomb – September 2016
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 57 of Puzzlebomb, for September 2016, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 57 – September 2016 (printer-friendly version)
The solutions to Issue 57 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 57 – Solutions – September 2016 (printer-friendly version)
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Maths at the British Science Festival 2016
Next week, the British Science Festival will take place in Swansea, in and around the University. Here’s our round-up of all the mathsiest of the maths events taking place during the week. Our own Katie Steckles will be there introducing most of these events, so you might spot her at the front telling you what to do if there’s a fire. You’ll need to register to book tickets, but all the events are free.