Science
Related: About this forumProof claimed for deep connection between primes
Last edited Wed Sep 19, 2012, 08:24 AM - Edit history (1)
The usually quiet world of mathematics is abuzz with a claim that one of the most important problems in number theory has been solved.
Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers a 'Diophantine' problem.
The abc conjecture, proposed independently by David Masser and Joseph Oesterle in 1985, might not be as familiar to the wider world as Fermats Last Theorem, but in some ways it is more significant. The abc conjecture, if proved true, at one stroke solves many famous Diophantine problems, including Fermat's Last Theorem, says Dorian Goldfeld, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York. If Mochizukis proof is correct, it will be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century.
Like Fermats theorem, the abc conjecture refers to equations of the form a+b=c. It involves the concept of a square-free number: one that cannot be divided by the square of any number. Fifteen and 17 are square free-numbers, but 16 and 18 being divisible by 4^2 and 2^2, respectively are not.
Read more : http://www.nature.com/news/proof-claimed-for-deep-connection-between-primes-1.11378
dimbear
(6,271 posts)or whatever you use to represent the idea of squared.....
Ptah
(32,983 posts)divisible by 4^2 and 3^2, respectively.....
and I was looking right at it, too.
tridim
(45,358 posts)I can't even imagine a 500 page proof.