Increase your sense of wonder. (Author of 50 books & 800 patents. Yale Ph.D.) "Pickover contemplates realms beyond our known reality." ~NY Times

New York
Joined September 2008
Ask me anything. I will be happy to answer some of your questions, and will try to reply to a portion of your questions below in the coming days.
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Math. Shiver in ecstasy. Don't you just love the number 150,209? It's the largest known value of n for which..... tinyurl.com/3d4rfrka
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Physics, mathematics, the universe. You've heard of velocity and acceleration, but have you heard of.... bit.ly/3IURcb0
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Mathematics. Have you ever wondered how many solutions this has for x?
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The Eye of God. New Venn diagram discovered by a human working with two AI models that communicated with each other! Image adapted from: Chris Dzoba, "Simple symmetric Venn diagrams with 17, 19 and 23 curves," 2026, arxiv.org/abs/2609.26546, cc by 4.0 [math]
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Will published math papers ever contain these words in the Acknowledgements? "The author does not have the expertise to verify or understand many of the mathematical details."
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Mathematics, interference patterns. Waves, simulation, the ripples of our lives. By Koma Tebe, @KomaTebe, Used with permission.
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Math. The beautiful mystery of Prime Fibonacci numbers....
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Math. This tiling is pleasing to look at. What interesting observations can you make about this tiling? Source: tinyurl.com/yck6zvj3
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A three-way battle between one AI, another AI, and Magnus Carlsen. Magnus’s best strategy? Do nothing. The two AIs will conclude each other as the only real threats, spend time obliterating each other, and leave Magnus to sweep up the leftovers. Source: tinyurl.com/3a8jxchd
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Shiver in delight. 24 factorial.
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Ramanujan’s problem. Imagine asking your friends to find positive integer solutions to this equation. It turns out that humanity will only find Ramanujan’s original solutions (N = 3, 4, 5, 7, 15), and we'll never find any more solutions.
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Mathematics. Welcome to a new universe. Three-player chess. Source: tinyurl.com/3a8jxchd
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A Gift from the Alien AI Gods. New Venn diagram discovered by a human working with two AI models that communicated with each other! Image adapted from: Chris Dzoba, Simple symmetric Venn diagrams with 17, 19 and 23 curves, 2026, arxiv.org/abs/2609.26546, cc by 4.0
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Mathematics, infinity, fractals. Yin-Yang for extraterrestrials. By Toby Howard, @tobyhoward, bit.ly/3Jw6G5U, Used with permission.
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In 1770, Joseph-Louis Lagrange showed that every positive integer can be written as the sum of four squares. For example, we can write the number 31 as 2² + 3² + 3² + 3².
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Math. 1027-digit prime number that can be arranged in the form of nested hexagons. Notice the shell of "1s" forming the skin of the structure. Source: Prime Curios, t5k.org/curios/page.php?numb… 1111111 1111111111 1110000000 0000000000 0110000000 0000000000 0011000000 0000000000 0000110000 0000000000 0000000110 0000000000 0000000000 0110000000 0000000000 0000001100 0000000000 0000000000 0011000000 0000000000 0000000001 1000000000 0000000000 0000000110 0000000000 0000000000 0000001100 0000000000 0000000000 0000001100 0000000000 0000000000 0000000110 0000000000 0000000000 0000000001 1000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0011000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000001100 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0110000000 0000000008 8000000000 0000000110 0000000000 0000087800 0000000000 0000110000 0000000000 0088000000 0000000000 1100000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000011000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000001 1000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0011000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000110000 0000000000 0000000000 0000011000 0000000000 0000000000 0000011000 0000000000 0000000000 0000110000 0000000000 0000000000 0011000000 0000000000 0000000001 1000000000 0000000000 0000011000 0000000000 0000000000 1100000000 0000000000 0000110000 0000000000 0000000110 0000000000 0000000001 1000000000 0000000000 1100000000 0000000000 1111111111 1111111111
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Life Explained. In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented his talk, 'Space and Time'. The opening words included "Henceforth, space for itself, and time for itself shall completely reduce to a mere shadow, and only some sort of union of the two shall preserve independence." 'Space and Time' included the first public presentation of spacetime diagrams. (See Minkowski's figure below). tinyurl.com/4ttjs3ed
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Physics, mathematics, the universe. You've heard of lines, squares, and cubes, but have you heard of... tinyurl.com/a8s6bert
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7 7772772277 7777232777 7772222332 2227723335 3332772355 5532772352 5327723555 5327723335 3332772222 3322227777 7723277777 7227727777 This is the smallest star-congruent prime containing all four prime digits -- and no other digits. This means that the 121-digit number can be arranged in the form of a six-pointed star. Source: t5k.org/curios/page.php?curi…
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Mathematics. This is actually an object discovered in abstract geometric space. (Fractal work produced with Mandelbulber.) Source: Jorge Abalo, fractal.batjorge.com/2020/09…, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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