A provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries.

We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy and the spiral in the center of a sunflower.

Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. But where does math get its power?

Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists and engineers, follows math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond, all leading to the ultimate riddle: Is math an invention or a discovery? Humankind's clever trick or the language of the universe?

Mathematics is the research study of topics such as quantity (numbers), framework, space, and also adjustment. There is a range of views amongst mathematicians and theorists regarding the exact range as well as interpretation of maths.

Mathematicians seek out patterns and also use them to formulate brand-new guessworks. Mathematicians resolve the fact or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof. When mathematical frameworks are good versions of real phenomena, after that mathematical thinking could offer understanding or predictions regarding nature. With making use of abstraction as well as reasoning, mathematics created from counting, computation, dimension, and the systematic study of the shapes and movements of physical objects. Practical mathematics has actually been a human task for as far back as written documents exist. The research called for to solve mathematical troubles could take years or perhaps centuries of sustained questions.