geekosystem

Earlier this month, we brought you the news that University of New Hampshire mathematician Yitang Zhang proved a weak version of the twin prime conjecture, showing that there is an endless supply of prime pairs which are separated by no more than 70,000,000. That seems like it's a long way from proving the proper twin prime conjecture -- showing an infinite number of primes separated by just two digits -- but it might not be. In their latest video, the math whizzes at Numberphile offer a great layman's explanation of what the twin prime conjecture is and what Zhang's work means for it. 

Ok, I'm just going to say it -- the physicists at Aalto University may have a bit too much time on their hands, seeing as they've taken Wikipedia watching to a new extreme. Working with researchers from around Europe, they've created the first known mathematical model of editorial conflicts in Wikipedia, which tracks the birth, life and occasionally even the resolution of the Internet grudge matches that determine what is fact on the Internet's number one repository of facts.