Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. When it comes to describing the physical world, we can do it ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...

It has long been a mystery why pure math can reveal so much about the nature of the physical world. Antimatter was discovered in Paul Dirac’s equations before being detected in cosmic rays. Quarks ...

The mathematical physics underpinning electromagnetic fields and wave equations provides a rigorous framework for understanding the behaviour of electric and magnetic phenomena in both classical and ...

In It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, Graham Farmelo assembled and edited essays on 11 great equations of the 20th century. Six are from physics: E = hf, E = mc 2, Einstein’s ...

Mathematical equations aren't just useful -- many are quite beautiful. And many scientists admit they are often fond of particular formulas not just for their function, but for their form, and the ...

The laws of physics imply that the passage of time is an illusion. To avoid this conclusion, we might have to rethink the reality of infinitely precise numbers. Strangely, although we feel as if we ...

Many books about science are meant to be pleasure reading. Such books attempt to convey the wonder and fascination and excitement of science, and ideally some of the substance as well. After all, good ...