IS MATHEMATICS a matter of invention or discovery? It is an age-old question that probably has no resolution, but this week we report on a breakthrough that backs the latter camp.
A mathematician on a geometrical safari has stumbled upon “hyperstructures” composed of interlocking rings that are themselves linked ring structures.
The discovery has set physicists hot on the trail of new states of matter (see “Make way for mathematical matter”). It is a further example of what Eugene Wigner once called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”. The most celebrated illustration is Paul Dirac’s prediction of the existence of…
