Happy New Year, Short Wavers! What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than this, the reset of the year? Zero is a fairly new... Zero is a young number in human history. How do our ...

Despite its importance for mathematics, the neuronal basis of the number zero in the human brain was previously unknown. Researchers discovered that individual nerve cells in the medial temporal lobe ...

I’m a zero at mental arithmetic. It’s true—I struggle with this skill—but I want to focus on the phrase itself. In our language, we often equate zero with something negative. But zero is the only real ...

Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others, to distinguish numbers ...

In the grand timeline of human civilization, certain discoveries change the course of history fire, the wheel, electricity, and, surprisingly to some, the number zero. Without zero, there would be no ...

On the eve of his fifth season in Carolina, Brian Burns heard that, in a league with decades of history, the largest rulebook in sports and a commissioner who governed from an iron throne, change was ...

What is the most important number in the entirety of mathematics? Ok, that’s a pretty silly question – out of infinite possibilities, how could you possibly choose? I suppose a big hitter like 2 or 10 ...

(from left) Prof. Florian Mormann and Esther Kutter, together with Prof. Andreas Nieder from the University of Tübingen, clarify the neuronal basis of the mathematical concept of “zero”. Despite its ...