Cohl Furey sounds like a goddamn new Marvel character, but actually she's a mathematical physicist. Can that really be her name? As a novelist, I feel reality is cheating by being so fucking dramatic:https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/ …
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Replying to @AnnKSterzinger
"Proof surfaced in 1898 that the reals, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions are the only kinds of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided." Quanta's math coverage is usually very good but this is ouch wrong
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Replying to @St_Rev @AnnKSterzinger
The correct statement is insanely fiddly and I don't know how you'd do it in a popular science article, but Quanta usually finds a way and this is disappointing.
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Replying to @St_Rev @AnnKSterzinger
Roughly, they're the only finite-dimensional division algebras over the real numbers. Unpacking that would take a while, but basically they're the only ones if: a) you want your system to include everyday numbers like 2, 31/7 and pi b) you don't want your system to be too big
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Replying to @St_Rev
This may be a dumb question, but what if this system HAS to be big? I know, the right answer is usually the simplest (reduce your fractions, kids!), but we ARE looking at shit that may or may not be in a place depending on whether you're looking at it...
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Replying to @AnnKSterzinger
The real numbers are already really big, though! Mathematicians and mathematical physicists often have intuitions like, a system should be big enough to maneuver in, but not so big that you get completely lost in it.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.