Is math invented by humans, or is it the language of the universe? Whether we think we’re good with numbers or not, we all use math in our daily lives. He built a ramp, an inclined plane, to slow the falling motion down so he could measure it.For time, I'll use an arbitrary unit, a Galileo, one Galileo.His name was Isaac Newton. An idea that, on the surface, makes sense, even this surface: the Mars yard, where they test the rovers at J.P.L.Well, we're not in Pisa, we don't have cannon balls, but we do have a bowling ball and a bouncy ball. Over a few weeks, he builds a big antenna beside the house to amplify the waves coming from his spark generator. (This program is no longer available for online streaming.) At over a mile, it is the farthest transmission to date.In fewer than 10 years, Marconi will be sending radio signals across the Atlantic. The results? Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the successful landing of rovers on Mars.But where does math get its power? Then he asks his brother and an assistant to carry a receiver across the estate to the far side of a nearby hill. NOVA leads viewers on a mathematical mystery tour -- a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. It accelerated.But how do you measure that? thinks he knows why. Or the first two notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”And a fourth sounds like… You can think of it as the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride.”In an octave, the string lengths create a ratio of two to one. Mathematics.But where does math come from?

Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, follow math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond.

And in a fourth, it is four to three.…a profound insight that mathematicians and scientists continue to explore to this day.In fact, there are plenty of other physical phenomena that follow simple ratios, from the two-to-one ratio of hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms in water, to the number of times the moon orbits the earth, compared to its own rotation, one-to-one, or that Mercury rotates exactly three times when it orbits the sun twice, a three-to-two ratio.In ancient Greece, Pythagoras and his followers had a profound effect on another Greek philosopher, Plato, whose ideas also resonate to this day, especially among mathematicians.Plato believed that geometry and mathematics exist in their own ideal world.So Plato's mathematical forms were the ideal version of the world around us, and they existed in their own realm. It weighs 15 pounds. Let's weigh them.First, we weigh the bowling ball.

And you took it when you were how old?It turns out, we can pinpoint it, and it's all in his head.Using f.M.R.I., scientists can scan Shyam's brain as he answers math questions, to see which parts of the brain receive more blood, a sign they are hard at work.But is that the result of teaching, and intense practice, or are the foundations of math built into our brains?Scientists are looking for the answer here, at the Duke University Lemur Center, a 70-acre sanctuary in North Carolina, the largest one for rare and endangered lemurs, in the world.Like all primates, lemurs are related to humans through a common ancestor that lived as many as 65-million years ago. And why, in science, does it work so well?Human beings have always looked at nature and searched for patterns. In a longer forecast, small errors grow into big ones. So is the behavior of water boiling on a stove, or the stock market, or the interaction of neurons in the brain, much of human psychology and parts of biology.And for engineers “approximate” is close enough, close enough to take you to Mars.Meanwhile, engineers, in practice, have to sacrifice the precision of mathematics to keep it useful, making it seem more like an imperfect tool of our own invention.So which is mathematics? I mean this is just amazing to me.But is it really “unreasonably effective?” Not everyone thinks so.There's a reason meteorologists predict the weather for the coming week but not much further out than that.

And what those images show is that throughout the visible universe, as far as the telescope can see, the law of gravity still applies.Mathematics had accurately predicted a previously unknown planet.It's like having a servant that is far more capable than you are.

Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists and engineers, follows math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond, all leading to the ultimate riddle: Is math an invention or a discovery? Everything is happening so fast.Galileo came up with an ingenious solution. Inflight rights also available. Humankind's clever trick or the language of the universe?

The equations also made a startling prediction: together, electricity and magnetism could produce waves of energy that would travel through space at the speed of light: electro-magnetic waves.His process starts with a series of sparks. Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, follow math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond, all leading to the ultimate riddle: Is math an invention or a discovery? Its name? Daily weather is just too complex and chaotic for precise modeling. We need to figure out whether they can really use number, pure number, as a cue.She has conducted thousands of trials and shown that lemurs and rhesus monkeys can learn to pick the right answer.And so do human infants. The burst of electricity creates a momentary magnetic field, which, in turn, generates a momentary electric field, which creates another magnetic field.