What you're looking at is proof, according to one Reading scientist, that you can divide by zero. Or at least, you can sort of divide by zero. If Dr James Anderson has his way, instead of your calculator giving you an error message should you try it, you would get a brand new number: nullity.

I've written his proof on the back of an envelope for added authenticity - nullity is the funny zero-with-an-I-in-it seen in the top left hand corner. You can watch Dr Anderson explain it all himself in an article here.

One of my colleagues went out and filmed him, a piece BBC News 24 and South Today used this evening. Up til 10:30pm tonight we'd had over fifty comments on the web feature, an amazing level of interest in what is, essentially, maths. It's heartening that people who like maths come out of the woodwork given the temptation!

The only problem is, a lot of them think Dr Anderson has got it horribly wrong. Here's a small selection of comments:

"In the derivation when the expression 1/0 x 0/1 is written isn't the 1/0 undefined and the solution unattainable?"

"I fail to see how this idea could withstand basic algebra."

"This is absurd, you can't just take two unknown quantities and set them to your own made up definition."

Some of the comments slip into fairly detailed mathematical language - which creates the fun spectacle of people trying to write "nought over one to the power of minus one" using a plain text box. But the message is clear: Dr Anderson has by no means convinced everyone, and it's looking like he may have struggled to convince anyone.

The next step will be for me to take all these concerns to Dr Anderson and see if we can get a response or a clarification. It seems odd to me that his theory would get as far as television if it's so easily blown out of the water by visitors to our site, so there must be something more to it.

But I'm not going to go before I've armed myself with a little more knowledge. I've harnessed the rusting remnants of my A level maths to reply to one lady who wrote in about 'nullity', since I reckoned I could spot a hole in her logic, but I'm struggling to keep up with the main thrust of the debate. There's only one person to turn to: my old maths teacher, Mr Cutts.

I've fired off an email - if anyone is able to tell me, in simple terms, whether Dr Anderson is onto something or not, it will be him. Whatever the outcome, I think it's brilliant that one of our most successful articles in ages has been all about maths. Perhaps we shouldn't despair for civilization just yet.