h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gnomon, I'm sorry but good as the article is, the only thing I've found to comment on was the "Related BBC Links" the moderator saw fit to include. Why is a three-year-old story about Andrew Wiles' proof of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (and hence Fermat's last theorem) pertinant? Okay, so it also involves pure maths, but I don't think Mersenne primes come into it at all.

Strange.

Interesting that you found the links eccentric. Though it's not the moderators that put them in, it's us We pride ourselves on sending Researchers off on slightly irrelevant tangents - it just goes to show what a rich resource the bbc is for content. Also, we thought that Researchers might find other areas of pure maths to be of interest...

Thanks Bagpuss and Anna for your comments. The bit I included at the end about other aspects of Prime Numbers wasn't directly relevant either, but I included it because it shows how "pure" mathematics can suddenly become "applied" mathematics. Anna's link to the Wiles proof shows how pure maths can suddenly become worthy of news coverage.

Sorry, I didn't mean moderators. Whups. I think I got confused because both are new since the Beeb took over.

Okay, point taken about the link. It was just something that struck me.