We keep track of when our discoveries are reported in the press and when members of the Institute report on the discoveries of others. We think it’s important to publicise our best work, because researchers are able to build upon it only to the extent that they know about it.
Nature21 Mar ’24
Roll over, Newton
A robotic metamaterial has been made that violates Newton’s third law of motion, allowing for the propagation of topological solitons.
Number theory5 Mar ’24
Elliptic curve mystery
Quanta reports on work by Yang-Hui He, who co-discovered unexpected patterns in a property related to the curves’ integer roots using AI.
Evolvability11 Aug ’22
Price of immortality
Like Orpheus in the Underworld, the London Institute is challenging mortality, says our writer Thomas Hodgkinson in The Sunday Telegraph.
AI-assisted maths6 Jun ’22
AI helps with maths
An AI that can turn mathematics problems written in English into a formal proving language could make them easier for other AIs to solve.
Innovation24 Feb ’20
Taming complexity
Complexity may be hard to unpick, without being inherently bad. Ensure the benefits of any addition to company systems outweigh its costs.
Thermodynamics31 Jul ’18
Slurry in a hurry
The 3D structures of slurries—fluids full of solid particles—can be swiftly measured using a single 2D shot and electron diffraction data.
Discoveries3 Mar ’18
Whatever you say
If you meet a conspiracy theorist, don't bother trying to change their views. Encountering the truth only makes them more pig-headed.
Innovation25 Sep ’17
Yes you cayenne
In innovation, the most apparently niche ingredients may turn out to be the most useful, as the structures of recipes become more complex.
Discoveries10 Jun ’17
Moore means less
Following Moore's law, solar power will become ever cheaper as an energy source—and there’s nothing Donald Trump can do about it.
Markets10 Apr ’17
A little bird told me
Twitter sentiment during busy periods, such as ahead of quarterly earnings releases, provides some indication if a stock will rise or fall.
Financial risk5 Apr ’17
Fools rush in
Measures meant to stabilise economies may have the opposite effect, creating cyclical structures in the networks of contracts between banks.
Innovation6 Jan ’17
Harnessing Serendipity
Quirky and apparently mysterious, innovation is critical to sustained economic growth—and mathematics can help us understand how it works.
Tech progress12 May ’16
The future’s bright
Architects are designing rotating homes to increase the efficiency of solar power, while its cost is set to keep falling by 10% annually.
Tech progress26 Jan ’16
Here comes the sun
The cost of solar power will continue to fall by 10% annually, meeting 20% of global energy needs far sooner than has been predicted.
Markets25 Jan ’15
A stock response
The simultaneous study of news sentiment and browsing behaviour, even on small time-scales, can help to predict stock market fluctuations.
Network theory4 Oct ’14
Beauty in repairability
The hunt for networks that best combine efficiency with repairability, to avoid breakdown, leads to structural designs that resemble snowflakes.
Network theory3 Oct ’14
Snowflakes don't break
Snowflake-shaped networks, with redundant arms that come into use when main branches break down, are easiest to fix when disaster strikes.
Fractals20 Feb ’13
Towers of strength
The Eiffel tower is now a longstanding example of hierarchical design due to its non-trivial internal structure spanning many length scales.