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Let's move on to a mega hero of maths, Isaac Newton (born the year that Galileo died). What he did is still astounding. Using a scratchy feather and black ink made from soot, he discovered how it is that we go around the sun and why we call it a 'year'. With the law of gravity he was able to explain the ocean tides and predict the position of planets into the future. By using soot mixed with water?
It's actually the 'sratchy' bit that gets really interesting. Along comes Einstein with a - ballpoint? Let's settle for a piece of chalk. And he figures out some pretty odd stuff like space & time are the same thing - what? Our hunter-gatherer designed senses just go grapefruit! Where did that come from?
Feather, pencil, chalk, pen - these simple 'things' have given us satellite navigation, G3 mobiles, D.V.D's, microwave ovens, tele, P.C.'s, you name it. How is this? Well, I guess you will want to hit me over the head with a giant sausage - but it's maths. And yet - you can't touch it, or smell it. It's unreal. But it seriously exists. It must do - it's responsible for the way everything works!
Many of our everyday things make use of the electromagnetic spectrum. This would not have been possible if a Scottish guy in the nineteenth century called Maxwell had not come up with the equations that describe how it works, just like Newton did with gravity. Einnie came up with some real crackers, like his famous one which proves that matter & energy are the same thing. Of course he didn't know this beforehand, or even guess it. It emerged from the equations. Everyone said you've got to be kidding? But now we have nuclear power and some massively nasty bangs, which prove the maths was right.
The best one comes in his theory about the universe. The equations told him that it had to be either getting bigger, or growing smaller. Like everyone else he was convinced it was standing still, so he added a naughty bit to freeze it. If he'd listened to the maths he would have been the first person to discover that the universe is expanding - one of the greatest triumphs in the history of science! The prize went to Hubble ten years later.
Another example of how 'real' maths is happened in 1846. Again, just by writing squiggles on a piece of paper, a Cornish guy and a French guy worked out that there was another planet! When telescopes got stronger they found it, just where it was predicted, and called it Neptune.
The best crack about the awesome power of maths to describe reality comes from Paul Dirac in the 1920's. He was trying to link two theories together, but he hated what the equations kept telling him - and no wonder. They were saying there was an anti-electron. Even in their worst nightmares no one had ever imagined 'anti-matter'. Now it's common place in physics, and its creation goes right back to micro-seconds after the birth of the universe. Once again its existence was first discovered not by instruments, but by manipulating squiggles on a piece of paper or blackboard.
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