Counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin is not the sort of scholarly endeavour that would distract Doyne Farmer. But identifying a similarly granular level of detail will be a major part of his next big venture – and its scope is immense.

As one of the pioneering ’80s scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Farmer helped develop chaos theory – the branch of mathematics that explains the order in disorder. The theory famously shows how the tiniest of details – like a