The world of math is complex … in more ways than one. Sure, it’s full of complex ideas that are all tied up and packaged within beautiful and often times complex wrapping paper that is adorned with ...

An international team of researchers shows through a concrete theoretical experiment that the prediction by standard complex quantum theory cannot be expressed by its real counterpart and ratifies its ...

In spite of their name, “imaginary” numbers are as real as any other numbers, especially when it comes to hunting for lost treasure. For our first Insights puzzle of 2019, let’s go on a treasure hunt.

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

Like physics, math has its own set of “fundamental particles”—the prime numbers, which can’t be broken down into smaller ...

New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.” In 2014, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, ...

Scientists found exotic prime numbers may play a role in black hole physics, revealing a surprising connection between number theory and the extreme environments of the universe.