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The Accidental Astrophysicists

Posted by kdawson on from the all-math-to-me dept.

An anonymous reader recommends a ScienceNews story that begins: "Dmitry Khavinson and Genevra Neumann didn't know anything about astrophysics. They were just doing mathematics, like they always do, following their curiosity. But five days after they posted one of their results on a preprint server, they got an email that said 'Congratulations! You've proven Sun Hong Rhie's astrophysics conjecture on gravitational lensing!'... Turns out that when gravity causes light rays to bend, it can make one star look like many. But until Khavinson and Nuemann's work, astrophysicists weren't sure just how many. Their proof in mathematics settled the question."

5 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Suprise! by cobaltnova · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mathematics results are physically relevant. News at 11.

    1. Re:Suprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      No way. Mathematics is merely applied logic.

    2. Re:Suprise! by Mr.+Beatdown · · Score: 5, Funny

      Logic is merely applied reality.

      --
      My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
  2. animation depicting gravitational lensing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The wikipedia article on gravitational lensing has a neat animation produced with a numerical model. I wouldn't make it your desktop background though because it might warp your file icons.

  3. Re:Further proof ... by aproposofwhat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It can also be argued that philosophy is more basic than math. Some might say that we need our ontologies and epistemologies before we can do calculations involving them.

    Some might, but I wouldn't.

    Mathematics has its own ontology - namely the axioms that it is based upon.

    It has no need for a separate epistemology - it is what it is, and that's that.

    Propositional calculus, on which Russell, Frege and Wittgenstein based their mathematical philosophy (which I see as applicable to all rational thought) is itself the root of mathematics - thus mathematics (or logic, however you wish to phrase it) is fundamental to philosophy, rather than philosophy being fundamental to mathematics.

    You can't have an ontology without maths - epistemologies are more equal, but essentialy the whole of philosophy is based on the propositional calculus, which is only one of many possible formulations of mathematics.

    --
    One swallow does not a fellatrix make