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The New York Times published an article in its magazine about one of the greatest mathematicians living today, Terry Tao. The first paragraph should whet one's appetite for the rest of the article:
This April, as undergraduates strolled along the street outside his modest office on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, the mathematician Terence Tao mused about the possibility that water could spontaneously explode. A widely used set of equations describes the behavior of fluids like water, but there seems to be nothing in those equations, he told me, that prevents a wayward eddy from suddenly turning in on itself, tightening into an angry gyre, until the density of the energy at its core becomes infinite: a catastrophic ‘‘singularity.’’ Someone tossing a penny into the fountain by the faculty center or skipping a stone at the Santa Monica beach could apparently set off a chain reaction that would take out Southern California.
There are some people who are just too smart, and this guy is one of them.
(Score: 4, Funny) by frojack on Saturday July 25 2015, @10:11PM
And all those screw propellers we've been putting on ships! We've been living on the edge.
Just goes to show you that even things that have NEVER happened are the fault of mankind.
This is why we keep the Mathematicians safely ensconced in universities where they can't do much damage.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @03:43AM
now if only we could convince the climate change fearmongers of this
not likely
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday July 26 2015, @07:55PM
I thought the largest employer of mathematicians was the NSA?
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