Ready, Set, Math
The ancient game of Set is based on rich mathematics. For Numberphile, the mathematician Catherine Hsu explains the modular arithmetic at the heart of the game and some more challenging extensions of Set that she helped invent. In Set, players try to find special triples of cards in a deck. It's possible for a collection of cards to have no such triples, but the largest possible size of such a "cap set" is 20 cards. In 2016, Erica Klarreich wrote for Quanta about a new proof that placed bounds on cap sets for larger extensions of the game.
Sun-ergy
Astronomers found that our sun blasts out a surprising amount of high-energy radiation. Their theoretical models can't account for the wealth of photons at those energies, reports Monisha Ravisetti for SPACE.com. The new measurement follows up on previous surprising findings from when astronomers examined the sun's radiation at slightly lower energies. Natalie Wolchover reported on the mystery of the sun's excess gamma radiation in 2019. In February, Katie McCormick reported for Quanta on the new measurement at higher energies. The measurement also revealed the energy at which the plethora of photons steeply drops off. That cutoff might hint at what's going on. | |
