Welcome to the quantum science podcast.

Each episode we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers.

New studies are uncovering how the brain

creates something out of nothing. That's next.

Explore the world of science in the quantum book Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire, published

by the MIT Press. Available now at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, or your local

bookstore. Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted

wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others,

to distinguish numbers such as 50, 50, 50, and 5,0005. An elementary version of the concept of

Zero was born. Hundreds of years later, in 7th century India, Zero took on a new identity.

No longer a placeholder, the digit acquired a value and found its place on the number line, before one.

Its invention went on to spark historic advances in science and technology.

From Zero sprang the laws of the universe, number theory,

and modern mathematics. Andreas Nieder is a neuroscientist who studies animal and human intelligence

at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Zero is by many people, mathematicians definitely considered one of the greatest, or maybe the greatest

achievement of mankind, because for a long time in human history, there was no zero, it was

absent.

It took a long time and eternity until mathematicians finally invented zero as a number.

Perhaps that's no surprise, given the concept, can be difficult for the brain to grasp.

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