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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Princeton Professor Andrew Houck’s calculus students had just finished grappling with a set of equations on the forces of tension and gravity when he pulled a large pendulum back to his shoulder and ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sitting in the front row of a "General Chemistry" class at McCosh last fall, tracking questions and taking notes as earnestly as any undergraduate, Ana Mostafavi was a reassuring fixture in one of the ...

In a recent X exchange, Telegram founder Pavel Durov urged students to study math for its logic and problem-solving power. Elon Musk replied, advocating for physics—with math. Their posts have ...