Читать книгу The Genius in my Basement - Alexander Masters, Alexander Masters - Страница 10
Оглавление*6 The Monster
(Mathematical chapters in this book are quarantined by a *)
That’s the name of Simon’s special area in mathematics, because of its gargantuan complexity and fiery insight into the fundamental structure of our universe.
No one knows what the Monster looks like. It can be detected only through its mathematical traces. Like shadows and ghosts, it inhabits a penumbral landscape between abstraction and solidity.
The Monster belongs to an area of mathematics known as Group Theory, or the study of symmetry.
Groups are represented in textbooks by tiresome grids of numbers similar to sudoku tables, yet they are among the most startling investigative tools in human thought. Quantum Theory, Relativity Theory, predictions about the number and types of sub-atomic particles, the codes used to scramble military and financial information – all of it fundamentally reliant on the study of Groups. They have even been used to investigate incest among Aboriginal tribes.
A sudoku table has nine rows and nine columns of numbers.
The Monster has 8080174247945128758864599049617107 57005754368000000000.
