The Function Room

This week I’m joined by another returnee to the function Room, a lecturer at the Maynooth University Department of Geography and we’re talking about voting systems and the numbers they generate. We catch an STV, - single transferrable vote, FPTP -first past the post and the second chance of the French system.We find out why Eurovision is a giant democratic experiment and ultimately why a vote in Ireland goes on an adventure.

This week in the function room, the hole shebang. A bit about Black Holes with Dr John Regan. Royal Society - SFI University Research Fellow in the Department of Theoretical Physics. we caefully scrape the surface of the topic of black holes without hopefully getting sucked in and destroyed by the weight of the topic. John tells me how he got into black holes why he can't really get out, how Einstein nearly got it wrong and then got it right with a little help from his friends, what the LIGO saw, what it's like as a black hole expert to look at the first photo and is there a black hole in the room with us right now? There's the usual whiteboard nosing and of course I ask about time travel.

My guest is Katie Steckles, Mathematician, presenter and communicator. She has written seven books about mathematics, hosts the brilliant Mathemetical Objects podcast where she and her co presenter Peter Rowlatt discuss with their guests, very ordinary objects, and sometimes weird ones, and the mathematics behind and because of that object.The kind of podcast I would love to have made if i were cleverer and had thought of it. It's a very interesting chat about the arbelos, kalaidocycles, bringing the stories of mathematics to light, the skill of not knowing what you are doing, Euclid's brother, Pythagoras's very existence, Jeff Goldblum, and a global maths communications hub built on a submarine in Katie's long term plans.Again apologies for the aperiodical nature of these podcasts - pretend it's another era and post gets held up in winter storms. ANyway it's fitting as Katie's website is call Aperiodical.com and describes that lack of pattern in her blogposts.Things you can look up afterwards - the kaleidocycle, the tetrahedron, Andrew Wyles - the man who solved Fermat's last theorem. Tim Gowers, an expert in combinatorics, Terence Tao, childhood genius who kept getting better, and the late Maryam Mirzakhani. Jurassic Park dragon curve and chaos theory. It's all to do with fractals. And I'm going to do lots more on that.

Matt Kenzie is one of the Science advisors on the hit Netflix show Three Body Problem.The show and the book is about what happens when aliens want to say hi. Aliens called the San Ti, from a planet in a system of three Suns orbiting each other. They are a three body problem and chaos ensues for the San-Ti.3BP is made by Weiss and Benioff, so we talk about Game of Thrones naturally, the three body problem, nano-slicing, quantum tunnelling and just how close to life the life of the phd student is the image of being young, hot and ready to save the world.Warning contains spoilers about the series if you've started it. If you haven't they mightn't mean much to you unless you've seen the show. So I don't know whether it's a spoiler or not but look just be careful. Also contains references to elephants, dimensions and boring a hole in your head with a proton beam.