Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a ...

To begin to understand what mathematicians and physicists see in the abstract structures of symmetries, let’s start with a familiar shape. We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does ...

There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...

The beautiful color illustration of frieze patterns above is taken from Frank A. Farris’ Creating Symmetry: The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns (Princeton University Press, 2015), a math book ...

This lavishly illustrated book provides a hands-on, step-by-step introduction to the intriguing mathematics of symmetry. Instead of breaking up patterns into blocks--a sort of potato-stamp ...

Presidency University's Department of Mathematics hosted Symmetry '25, drawing nearly 260 participants for a day of lectures, ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...

Physicists have a lot in common with Ponce de León and U2’s Bono. After decades of searching, they aren’t getting any younger. And they still haven’t found what they’re looking for. In this case, the ...