Who said Sci Fi had no factual basis! I am no Physicist or Mathematician but this is amazing... Douglas Adams probably imagined this but as he was not one of the above either the significance of his "theory" was just a theme of the book, now it seems it could be the theme of the Universe... Truth is stranger than fiction, especially when one delves into the workings of Quarks... This quote from Douglas seems to be quite fitting;
I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
2 comments:
Utterly intriguing article, and all news to me. I renewed my very scant acquaintance with primes last year, endeavoring to help my 7th grader with her math. Reacquired the hang of factoring, but without even beginning to comprehend that primes “are the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of mathematics, the atoms of arithmetic.” Now, thanks no doubt to Du Sautoy’s prime writing skills, I think I may have half-grasped the signficance of Reimann’s critical line across the zeta landscape. I certainly understand – for the moment, anyway – that the similarity between (1) the distribution of zeros there, and (2) the energy levels in the erbium nucleus was exciting news all around.
No clue, though, about the significance of 42 for the hitchhikers. Have to look that up.
My own prime association with all this would be Arthur Koestler’s story about recollecting mathematical formulas in an effort to pass the days and hours while imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War. He used wire pulled from a mattress spring to scratch equations on his cell wall. On scratching out Euclid’s proof that there are an infinite number of primes, he recovered a sense of “enchantment” he’d experienced as a boy pursuing mathematics as a hobby. He wrote (in Bricks to Babel):
“[F]or the first time, I suddenly understood the reason for this enchantment: the scribbled symbols on the wall represented one of the rare cases where a meaningful and comprehensible statement about the infinite is arrived at by precise and finite means. The infinite is a mystical mass shrouded in a haze; and yet it was possible to gain some knowledge of it without losing oneself in treacly ambiguities. The significance of this swept over me like a wave. The wave had originated in an articulate verbal insight; but this evaporated at once, leaving in its wake only a wordless essence, a fragrance of eternity, a quiver of the arrow in the blue. I must have stood there for some minutes, entranced, with a wordless awareness that ‘this is perfect – perfect’…”
I always thought that was nice, even though I have to consult the supplied footnote in order to apprehend Euclid’s proof. And it doesn’t give me a buzz.
But - particularly given his own fascination with the role chance plays in discover - Koestler would have probably found Nirvana contemplating this new and remarkable advance in the theory of primes that you’ve noted in this post.
First time visitor, here. Nice blog!
Thanks... as I said I am not a mathemetician by a long chalk but also found it facinating. Anything that broadens our vision of the Universe is always facinating to me although most times the terms used pass way over my head. :-)
Post a Comment