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This is an illustration of a model of a paradox – they hydrostatic paradox, as demonstrated by Blaise Pascal. The paradox is that the pressure at the bottom of a column of water only depends on the height of the water, not the shape or the volume. Six tons of water and six ounces of water will [...]

Nature looks at the star power of “network theory,” curious statistics that control all kinds of complicated systems. They’ve found that even really complex networks are shaped by an influential few:

To demonstrate their technique, Yang-Yu Liu of Northeastern University in Boston and his colleagues looked at the entire human metabolic network and found that concentrations of about 10% [...]

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An inside that is also an outside, as depicted in Python.

From

MIT Technology Review crunches the numbers and figures that anyone who spends three years on Mars is going to witness an H-bomb-sized asteroid collision:

Today. William Bruckman and pals at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao do exactly this kind of analysis but with a twist. They derive impact probabilities for Earth but also for Mars. Their conclusion [...]

This painting was one of the winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2007, a mathematical art contest.

I suppose nowadays, fractal art seems very, very 1990s. But still – there’s something fun and dreamlike about it.

As Dr. Mandelbrot himself says in his introduction to the gallery:
“What distinguishes fractal geometry within mathematics is an exceptional and [...]

Boston Globe blows the lid off an M.I.T. syndicate that appears to have made a cool $8 million fixing the lottery:

[Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory W.] Sullivan’s report details the way a handful of math and science wizards, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates looking for an interesting school project, turned Cash WinFall into a nearly fulltime business, spending [...]

PhysOrg knows, thanks to this math professor’s blind-spot-eliminating side-view mirror:

A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous “blind spot” for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion.

…

Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of [...]

PhysOrg has something new for fearful flyers to obsess over. The further an airline is from its break-even point – either losing money or making a healthy profit – the safer it is to fly:

“The accident risk went down as they got further away from their financial goals in either direction,” said Peter Madsen, assistant professor of organizational leadership [...]

New Scientist looks at where and how business happens – and reveals that out of 37 million global companies, it’s only a very few who call the shots:

the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a [...]