Maths on the Move

Can we build a low carbon energy network

To help mitigate climate change the UK government has pledged to decarbonised UK electricity supply by 2035. That's a huge science and engineering challenge on a very tight deadline. In this episode we talk to two people who know all about the challenges involved: Chris Dent, Professor of Industrial Mathematics, and Lars Schewe, Reader in Operational Research, both of the University of Edinburgh. Both helped to organise an intensive two week "deep dive" workshop on the Mathematics and statistics for low carbon energy systems earlier this year as part of a longer research programme at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge.
Chris and Lars tell us why decarbonising the energy network also resents huge mathematical challenges — and why the effort isn't unlike the Apollo mission that got people to the Moon in the 1960s.
You can read more about the topic discussed in this episode in this article.
This content was produced as part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from the collaboration here.
The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.
 

The travelling salesman

We continue our series about bringing maths to the stage and screen by going back to 2012 when we were lucky enough to host the UK premiere of the Travelling Salesman, here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, our home. It is an unusual movie: despite almost every character being a mathematician there's not a mad person in sight. Moreover, the plot centres on one of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics, does P = NP? Timothy Lanzone, the writer and director, tells us about creating drama from mathematics, and we discuss the maths behind the movie.
(The sound effects used in this podcast are by jlozano and nemoDaedalus.)
You can read more about the travelling salesman problem, P versus NP, and cryptography on plus.maths.org

The universal machine: Putting Alan Turing on the stage

When you think of Alan Turing you might think of his work breaking the Enigma code in World War II. Or you might think of his work that helped build the foundations of computer science and mathematical logic. Or you might even think of his groundbreaking work in mathematical biology on morphogensis which helps explain animal patterns.
One thing we hadn't thought of, until 2013 that is, was that he could be the emotional centerpoint of a musical. The universal machine is a musical about Alan Turing's life and work that was staged in London in 2013. As part of our series about putting maths on stage and screen, we revisit our 2013 interview with the writer and director David Byrne, actor Richard Delaney, who played Turing, and assistant director Natalie York, to find out how you turn such a story, and the maths in it, into a musical.
We are very grateful to Dominic Brennan, who wrote the music for The universal machine, for giving us permission to use the track Building The Bombe Part Two from the show.
 
The universal machine poster detail.
 
For more information:
You can read the original article accompanying this podcast and a review of The universal machine;
You can find out more about the Enigma code and how it was cracked in Exploring the Enigma;
You can read about morphogenesis in How the leopard got its spots;
And there is more on Turing and his work in Alan Turing: ahead of his time and What computers can't do. These two articles also look at the halting problem which is related to the Entscheidungsproblem mentioned in the podcast.

A disappearing number

This is the second part of our mini series focussing on mathematics coming to life on stage and in film. We revisit our 2008 interview with mathematician and actor Victoria Gould and mathematician Marcus DuSautoy, who were both involved in the development of the play A disappearing number produced by Complicité. The play explores the fascinating collaboration between the mathematicians GH Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Find out how theatre can embody, not just the story of the people involved, but also the mathematics itself.
You can also read about A disappearing number in this article. To find out more about Victoria Gould's career as an actor and mathematician, see this article or listen to last week's episode of Maths on the move.

Have physicists discovered a fifth force of nature?

In the summer we came across news coverage claiming that scientist were on the verge of discovering a fundamental force of nature they hadn't previously known about. This would be a fifth force, in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.
Such a discovery would be quite a revolution, so we went to talk to our friend Ben Allanach, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, to find out more. Ben explained the science, gave us his personal hunch regarding the experimental results, and provided a fascinating glimpse into life at the cutting edge of physics.
Ben Allanach
To find out more about the topics explored in this podcast, see The physics of elementary particles and A brief introduction to quantum field theory. Click here to see all our content featuring Ben Allanach.

Victoria Gould: Combining mathematics and acting

Victoria Gould has always known she would be an actor, and went straight from studying arts at school to running her own theatre company. But she eventually had to come clean about her guilty secret - she loves maths - and has since managed to combine a career as a research mathematician and teacher with a successful acting career on television and in theatre. For this episode of Maths on the move, which was recorded in 2008, Victoria told us what it's like being an actor and a mathematician and how those two, at first sight very different, areas overlap.
You can also read the article accompanying this podcast, and find out more about the play A disappearing number here.
We were inspired to revisit this episode when we met mathematical film maker Ekaterina Eremenko at this year's Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Eremenko's latest film, Solving the Bonnet problem, really gets across that mathematics is a dynamic, and sometimes dramatic, pursuit that can be well suited for the stage and screen. You can watch the trailer here.

How many dimensions are there?

How many dimensions are there? We might not be aware, but we are actually used to living in a curved, multidimensional Universe. In this episode theoretical physicist David Berman explains how, and he also dives into the world of string theory which predicts that the Universe has ten dimensions, some of which are hidden from our view. We first published this episode back in 2012, as part of our Science fiction, science fact project.
David Berman
You can also read the articles that accompany this podcast: Kaluza, Klein and their story of a fifth dimension and The ten dimensions of string theory.

Telescope topology

n this podcast we bring you breaking news from the world of topology! Four mathematicians, all in earlier stages of their career, have resolved the long-standing telescope conjecture which explores holes in spheres – of any dimension!
The result was announced this summer at a conference organised by Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge (INI).
We talk to two of these mathematicians, Tomer Schlank and Jeremy Hahn, to get a gist of this high-powered result in pure mathematics, which is nevertheless wonderfully intuitive. So fasten your seatbelt and join us on a trip into the wonderful world of homotopy theory!
 
Jeremy Hahn                  Tomer Schlank
To read an article exploring the telescope conjecture and for some background reading, see here.
This content was produced as part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI). The INI is an international research centre in Cambridge which attracts leading mathematicians from all over the world. You can find all the content from the collaboration here.

From clicks to chords

How is mathematics related to frequency related to pitch? We found out from our favourite music correspondent, Oli Freke! In this podcast you can hear how the music we love emerges from pure mathematical beats.
 
This podcast was originally released earlier this year when musician Ed Sheeran was in the news  as he was being sued for similarities between his song Thinking out loud from 2014, and Marvin Gaye's song Get it on from 1973. But, given the way we write music to fit into specific genres, is it possible to write unique music with the limited quantity of notes and chords available?
After first answering this question in this podcast, Oli has now written a brilliant article, From clicks to chords, where you can see some of the connections between maths and music come to life.   
You can find out more about the maths in music in Oli's articles other – How many melodies are there? and Sine language. And you can find more of Oli's music, and his book "Synthesizer Evolution", here!
The music in this podcast comes from, of course, Oli Freke! The track is called Funk Off.
 

How does human noise impact whales?

We humans have many rules and regulations surrounding noise — because we recognise that noise disruption is annoying, stressful, and ultimately robs us of our health.
Spare a thought for whales then, who have to put up with the constant noise caused by shipping and the construction of oil rigs and wind farms in the oceans. There are concerns that the noise pollution we cause bothers and confused the whales so much, it may even disrupt their ability to go on their annual migrations.
In this episode we talk to Stuart Johnston of the University of Melbourne in Australia who uses mathematics to understand the migration of whales and how it might be impacted by human generated noise. The ultimate aim is to figure out what we can do to mitigate the disruption we cause.
We met Stuart at a workshop on collective behaviour, which took place at the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge in August 2023. The workshop was part of a 6-month research programme on the mathematics of movement which is currently taking place at the INI.
This content was produced as part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI). The INI is an international research centre in Cambridge which attracts leading mathematicians from all over the world. You can find all the content from the collaboration here.