Finding out what the Big Bang and ink jets have in common

It often turns out there is more to commonplace everyday events than meets the eye. The folding of paper, or fall of water droplets from a tap, are two such events, both of which involve the creation of singularities requiring sophisticated mathematical techniques to describe, analyse and predict. On the positive side, there is much in common between many such singular events across the whole range of scales, from microscopic interactions to the very formation of the universe itself during the Big Bang.