This picture shows the "Z" machine at Sandia Labs in New Mexico producing, for a tiny fraction of a second, 290 TW of power - about 100 times the average electricity consumption of the entire planet. This astonishing power is used to subject metal samples to enormous pressures up to 10 million atmospheres, causing them to undergo violent plastic deformation at velocities up to 10 km/s. How should such extreme behaviour be described mathematically?

As part of our series of research articles deliberately focusing on the rigour and complexity of mathematics and its problems, Oxford Mathematician Gui-Qiang G Chen discusses his work on the Mathematics of Shock Reflection-Diffraction.

X-ray imaging is an important technique for a variety of applications including medical imaging, industrial inspection and airport security. An X-ray image shows a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional body. The original 3D information can be recovered if multiple images are given of the same object from different viewpoints. The process of recovering 3D information from a set of 2D X-ray projections is called Computed Tomography (CT).