A team of computer scientists has come up with a dramatically faster algorithm for one of the oldest problems in computer science: Maximum Flow. The problem asks how much material can flow through a network from a source to a destination if the links in the network have capacity limits. As an example, imagine a network of highways on which you’d like to send as many delivery trucks as possible from Los Angeles to New York City in a given amount of time. The new algorithm is “absurdly fast,” said Daniel Spielman of Yale University. “I was actually inclined to believe … algorithms this good for this problem would not exist.” Read the whole story that started in the 1950s – it sounds as a thriller – Link