Schoolchildren in Caversham have become the first in the country to learn about a new number - 'nullity' - which solves maths problems neither Newton nor Pythagoras could conquer.
Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading's computer science department, says his new theorem solves an extremely important problem - the problem of nothing.
"Imagine you're landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot's working," he suggests. "If it divides by zero and the computer stops working - you're in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you're dead."
Y lo explica en el pizarrón!
Computers simply cannot divide by zero. Try it on your calculator and you'll get an error message.
But Dr Anderson has come up with a theory that proposes a new number - 'nullity' - which sits outside the conventional number line (stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity).
Todo muy interesante... pero ya hace rato que si uno trata de dividir por cero, lo que suele recibir como respuesta es 'NaN' (not a number), que tiene seguramente las mismas propiedades que 'nullity', léase que nos informa que se ha dividido por cero y el resultado es inusable.