If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel

A tediously accurate map of the solar system.

Calca

I found this little gem of a tool called Calca. It is a text editor symbolic calculator.

Two-hundred-terabyte maths proof is largest ever

A computer cracks the Boolean Pythagorean triples problem — but is it really maths?

Three computer scientists have announced the largest-ever mathematics proof: a file that comes in at a whopping 200 terabytes, roughly equivalent to all the digitized text held by the US Library of Congress. The researchers have created a 68-gigabyte compressed version of their solution — which would allow anyone with about 30,000 hours of spare processor time to download, reconstruct and verify it — but a human could never hope to read through it.

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Fermat's Last Theorem Prize Approved

It was a problem that had baffled mathematicians for centuries -- until British professor Andrew Wiles set his mind to it.

"There are no whole number solutions to the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ when n is greater than 2."

Otherwise known as "Fermat's Last Theorem," this equation was first posed by French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, and had stumped the world's brightest minds for more than 300 years.

In the 1990s, Oxford professor Andrew Wiles finally solved the problem, and this week was awarded the hugely prestigious 2016 Abel Prize -- including a $700,000 windfall.

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Mathematicians Discover Prime Conspiracy

Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them.

Among the first billion prime numbers, for instance, a prime ending in 9 is almost 65 percent more likely to be followed by a prime ending in 1 than another prime ending in 9.

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49th Known Mersenne Prime Found!

On January 7th, GIMPS celebrated its 20th anniversary with the discovery of the largest known prime number, 2^74,207,281-1. Curtis Cooper, one of many thousands of GIMPS volunteers, used one of his university's computers to make the find.

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With Discovery, 3 Scientists Chip Away At An Unsolvable Math Problem

There are now 15 known convex pentagons, or nonregular pentagons with the angles pointing outward, that can "tile the plane."

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2014 Fields Medal and Nevanlinna Prize Winners Announced

Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal for her work connecting topology, geometry and dynamical systems.

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2048

If you haven't tried it, check out the fun new math game 2048 on the web and any smartphone or device.

The Breasts Equation

This equation is making the rounds this week. However, it doesn't work on IE as of yet.

Google: `e^{-\frac{((x-4)^2+(y-4)^2)^2}{999}}+e^{-\frac{((x+4)^2+(y+4)^2)^2}{999}}+0.1\timese^{-((x+4)^2+(y+4)^2)^2}+0.1\timese^{-((x-4)^2+(y-4)^2)^2}`

Belgian Mathematician Wins Abel Prize for Shaping Algebraic Geometry

Pierre Deligne netted the prize, one of the most prestigious in mathematics and worth about $1 million, for proving a deep conjecture about algebraic geometry which has helped to transform number theory and related fields. Click here for more information.

Kenneth I. Appel, Mathematician Who Harnessed Computer Power, Dies at 80

Kenneth I. Appel, who helped usher the venerable mathematical proof into the computer age, solving a longstanding problem concerning colors on a map with the help of an I.B.M. computer making billions of decisions, died on April 19 in Dover, N.H. He was 80.

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48th Known Mersenne Prime Found!

On January 25th, the largest known prime number, 2^57,885,161-1, was discovered on Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) volunteer Curtis Cooper's computer. The new prime number, 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times, less one, has 17,425,170 digits.

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Animated Factorization Diagrams

A very cool visual representation of numbers and their factors.

Prime Number Patterns (II)

Another interesting article using circles on the distribution of primes and twin primes.

Proof Claimed For Deep Connection Between Primes

The usually quiet world of mathematics is abuzz with a claim that one of the most important problems in number theory has been solved.

Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers — a 'Diophantine' problem.

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Prime Number Patterns

Prime Number Patterns is a visual representation of determining which natural numbers are prime, deficient, perfect, or abundant.

NASA MathTrax

NASA MathTrax is a graphing tool for middle school and high school students to graph equations, physics simulations or plot data files. The graphs have descriptions and sound so you can hear and read about the graph. Blind and low vision users can access visual math data and graph or experiment with equations and datasets.

'The Scale of the Universe,' by Two Teenage Brothers

Another Flash animation of the size of the universe.

Solar System Explained From the Inside Out

An excellent image showing the scale of our solar system.