If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge - or do they? In this week's episode, mathematician Natalie Priebe Frank and co-host Janna Levin discuss how recent breakthroughs in tiling can unlock structural secrets in the natural world.
Jul 9
Will We Ever Find Alien Civilizations?
Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe? The question has captivated us for centuries, but despite decades of searching it remains frustratingly unanswered. Every so often a curious signal appears — fossilized structures in a meteorite, say, or an unusual gas in an ... Show More
53m 56s
Jun 25
What Is the Positive Grassmannian and Why Does It Show Up Everywhere?
What links certain mathematical models of traffic flow, shallow-water waves, and quantum particle scattering? The surprising answer lies in a corner of the algebraic combinatorics world that goes by the name of positive Grassmannian. In simple terms, the positive Grassmannian is ... Show More
51m 45s