elliptic curves

"... a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organisations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage."
New Scientist

Tom Leinster writes about mathematicians having to decide if "we cooperate with the intelligence services" - his article is actually a pretty good summary of the NSA/GCHQ scandal.

How I became a solipsist ...

... it happened during a discussion on Scott's blog, in between here and there.
The real mystery is how 'the known' is embedded in 'the unknown unknown'.


-------

In totally unrelated news, we finally know how easter eggs are made ...



Happy Easter!

space roar?

"What was actually heard was something totally unexpected. Permeating the Universe was a strong radio hiss, about six times more powerful than anyone expected. No-one knew what it was or what was causing it. This was eventually christened "Space Roar" and remains one of the "Great Unsolved Problems in Physics"."
link

On my random walk through the interwebs I came across this article, which is low quality overall, but the space roar seems to be a real issue in radio astronomy - at least Wikipedia has an entry about it 8-).
I did not know about this "great unsolved problem in physics" until now, so please leave a comment if you happen to know more about it ...