See Astronomy study proves mathematics theorem for a case where astrophysical research helped to prove an extension to one of the most important theorems in mathematics ( The Fundamental Theorem of Algegra). The title of the article is slightly askew because the work by an astrophysicist provided the missing half to a proof, where the other half had come out of work by algebraic theorists.
This is one more case where efforts to understand or explain a physical phenomenon led to some insights into seemingly very abstract regions of mathematics. Since at least the time of Archimedes, research in physics and mathematics has always at least overlapped and sometimes, as in the case of Archimedes himself and Newton, been inseparable.
In my way of looking at Creation in its totality, this sort of overlap between physics and abstract mathematics is an indication that there is no firm and absolute line to be drawn between the concrete and the abstract facts/truths of Creation. The proper physics of our universe is a particular instantiation of a metaphysics which is manifested in the more abstract phases of Creation. See Abstract Mathematics and the Real Presence of Jesus Christ for a discussion of this issue from a slightly different perspective.