When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. The Harvard graduate student in physics was fascinated by the beautiful and ...

Roger Penrose makes his own rules. He is one of the world's most distinguished mathematical physicists and most inventive thinkers. Penrose’s work on the theory of general relativity in the 1960s led ...

The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have ...

Ah, tiles. You can get square ones, and do a grid, or you can get fancier shapes and do something altogether more complex. By and large though, whatever pattern you choose, it will normally end up ...

Moving pictures: microscope image of a quasicrystal two days after release. The right half has been colour coded. (Courtesy: Po-Yuan Wang and Thomas Mason/Nature) A quasicrystal made from tiny Penrose ...

If someone asked you to walk in a straight line over a constantly shifting floor, you would probably declare it impossible after a few tries and a couple of grazed knees. Researchers studying a ...

A theoretical computer built in a mixed-up mathematical universe might not sound like the most practical invention. But the discovery shows that computation can turn up in the most unlikely places, ...

In 1974, the mathematician Penrose discovered pairs of tiles that form an infinite plane without repeating patterns. Inspired by this, Max Cooper uses a rhythm fragment of one instrument to compose a ...

Ah, tiles. You can get square ones, and do a grid, or you can get fancier shapes and do something altogether more complex. By and large though, whatever pattern you choose, it will normally end up ...