The Sun has been emitting light and illuminating the Earth for more than four billion years. By analyzing the properties of solar light we can infer a wealth of information about what happens on the Sun. A particularly fascinating (and often overlooked) property of light is its polarization state, which characterizes the orientation of the oscillation in a transverse wave. By measuring light polarization, we can gather precious information about the physical conditions of the solar atmosphere and the magnetic fields present therein.

The problem of optimisation – that is, finding the maximum or minimum of an ‘objective’ function – is one of the most important problems in computational mathematics. Optimisation problems are ubiquitous: traders might optimise their portfolio to maximise (expected) revenue, engineers may optimise the design of a product to maximise efficiency, data scientists minimise the prediction error of machine learning models, and scientists may want to estimate parameters using experimental data.

Diophantine approximation is about how well real numbers can be approximated by rationals. Say I give you a real number $\alpha$, and I ask you to approximate it by a rational number $a/q$, where $q$ is not too large. A naive strategy would be to first choose $q$ arbitrarily, and to then choose the nearest integer $a$ to $q \alpha$. This would give $| \alpha - a/q| \le 1/(2q)$, and $\pi \approx 3.14$.

If you type fundamental anagram of calculus into Google you will be led eventually to the string of symbols 6accdæ13eff7i3l9n4o4qrr4s8t12ux, probably accompanied by an explanation more or less as follows: this is a recipe for an anagram - take six copies of a, two of c, one of d, one of æ and so on, then rearrange these letters into a chunk of Latin.

Fusion energy may hold the key to a sustainable future of electricity production. However some technical stumbling blocks remain to be overcome. One central challenge of the fusion enterprise is how to effectively withstand the high heat load emanating from the core plasma. Even the sturdiest solid solutions suffer damage over time, which could be avoided by adding a thin liquid coating.

Oxford Mathematician Andreas Bode talks about his work in representation theory and its lesson for the interconnectness of mathematics.