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Bosonic

(3,746 posts)
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 03:47 AM Sep 2012

Proof 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 Fermat’s 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 Mochizuki’s proof is correct, it will be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century.”

Like Fermat’s 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

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Proof claimed for deep connection between primes (Original Post) Bosonic Sep 2012 OP
Interesting. BTW, last line should read divisible by 4^2 and 2^2, respectively..... dimbear Sep 2012 #1
Interesting. BTW, last line should read Ptah Sep 2012 #3
OMFG dimbear Sep 2012 #4
Gawd I hated doing proofs.. Even one page proofs. tridim Sep 2012 #2

dimbear

(6,271 posts)
1. Interesting. BTW, last line should read divisible by 4^2 and 2^2, respectively.....
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 05:28 AM
Sep 2012

or whatever you use to represent the idea of squared.....

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