For hundreds of years, mathematicians have sought for a proof to the orange-packing question. That question is thus: What’s the most efficient way to pack oranges? Most people would assume it’s in the pyramid shape, but it was fiendishly hard to create a mathematical proof.

In 1998, the mathematician Thomas C. Hales finally created a proof, but it had a big problem: It hinged upon a bunch of insanely complicated computations done by computer. It has created a sort of culture clash in science, because, as the New York Times reports:

Believing it thus, at some level, requires faith that the computer performed the calculations flawlessly, without any programming bugs. For a field that trades in dispassionate logic and supposedly unambiguous truths and falsehoods, that is an uncomfortably gray in-between.

It’s a really interesting piece, and it throws to a lot of other disciplines too. Economics, census work, and even quite a bit of straight-ahead politics now relies upon computations that are not really checkable by humans.

(Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)