Newest thing I have learned from my new collection of RSS feeds, via improbableresearch_feed:

There is a famous and important mathematical problem called The Hairy Ball Theorem.*

My question is this: I spent my teenage years as a hardcore math geek - I can still sing verses of the Astronomer's Drinking Song by heart - and have also read an absolute TON of John/Rodney fic and Newt/Hermann fic and Bruce/Tony fic, and yet I have never heard of this before. (In fact there are NO results on google search of AO3 for the phrase "hairy ball theorem". How??? Slash fandom, pick up your slack!)


*Best explained as the mathematical proof that you can't comb a hairy ball flat without at least one cowlick somewhere on it.