moonshine – Quanta Magazine

John Conway Solved Mathematical Problems With His Bare Hands

Kevin Hartnett — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 15:50:14 +0000

In modern mathematics, many of the biggest advances are great elaborations of theory. Mathematicians move mountains, but their strength comes from tools, highly sophisticated abstractions that can act like a robotic glove, enhancing the wearer’s strength. John Conway was a throwback, a natural problem-solver whose unassisted feats often left his colleagues stunned. “Every top mathematician was in...

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Moonshine Link Discovered for Pariah Symmetries

Erica Klarreich — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 13:00:56 +0000

In 1892, the mathematician Otto Hölder posed a question that would occupy the field for more than a century: Is it possible to make a periodic table of all finite symmetry? The answer, to which hundreds of mathematicians have contributed, is yes. But the taxonomy that emerged from this monumental effort has prompted both enlightenment and head scratching. For in addition to the well-understood...

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Symmetry, Algebra and the Monster

Patrick Honner — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:55:27 +0000

You could forgive mathematicians for being drawn to the monster group, an algebraic object so enormous and mysterious that it took them nearly a decade to prove it exists. Now, 30 years later, string theorists — physicists studying how all fundamental forces and particles might be explained by tiny strings vibrating in hidden dimensions — are looking to connect the monster to their physical...

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Moonshine Master Toys With String Theory

Natalie Wolchover — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 16:08:31 +0000

After the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland in 2010, flight cancellations left Miranda Cheng stranded in Paris. While waiting for the ash to clear, Cheng, then a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University studying string theory, got to thinking about a paper that had recently been posted online. Its three coauthors had pointed out a numerical coincidence connecting far-flung...

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Mathematicians Chase Moonshine’s Shadow

Erica Klarreich — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:20:11 +0000

In 1978, the mathematician John McKay noticed what seemed like an odd coincidence. He had been studying the different ways of representing the structure of a mysterious entity called the monster group, a gargantuan algebraic object that, mathematicians believed, captured a new kind of symmetry. Mathematicians weren’t sure that the monster group actually existed, but they knew that if it did exist...

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