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Math

Claimed Proof of Riemann Hypothesis 345

An anonymous reader writes "Xian-Jin Li claims to have proven the Riemann hypothesis in this preprint on the arXiv." We've mentioned recent advances in the search for a proof but if true, I'm told this is important stuff. Me, I use math to write dirty words on my calculator.
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Claimed Proof of Riemann Hypothesis

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  • Tough problems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @11:55AM (#24031975) Homepage
    Part of the reason these problems are so tough because to solve them, you have to understand what the problem is first. I studied the Riemann hypothesis in college for a good week and I'm still not sure where you might begin solving it. Like the Navier-Stokes equations (another big problem with a big prize) solving it will probably require the invention of some new mathematics. Its not simply a matter of dividing by 3 and carrying the 2. I don't know about you but I haven't the slightest idea about how to go about inventing new math. That's the realm of Newton and Einstein, and few others.

    New math is the only way to go about solving some of these problems.
  • Re:not so fast (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Sheafification ( 1205046 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @12:08PM (#24032207)
    Indeed. Among some mathematicians it is a pleasant diversion to take bets on which of the major unsolved (or unprovable) problems has the most solutions appear on the arXiv this week.
  • by JuanCarlosII ( 1086993 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @12:08PM (#24032209)
    Not really, the kind of person who would solve a problem of this nature is probably going to be the Andrew Wiles reclusive genius type - a lot like the Russian gent whose name escapes me who solved the Poincare Conjecture. Thus he's not necessarily going to be too keen to teach/lecture/supervise and so would possibly not be too attractive to prospective employers.

    I doubt too many Maths faculties in the world have people working full-time on the Riemann Hypotheses.

    Of course I echo your sentiments that his proof is almost certainly flawed though.
  • Re:So what? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @12:34PM (#24032645)

    I would hardly consider Perelman's preprints to be "junk that couldn't pass peer review"

  • by Sirius00 ( 1318579 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @12:53PM (#24032923)
    This guys advisor, according to the Math Genealogy Project, is Louis deBranges. DeBranges also claimed to have proven this a few years back, but his proof was not accepted (for reasons unknown to me). The $1M might still be safe.
  • by danzona ( 779560 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @12:54PM (#24032935)
    it has huge effects on prime number distribution

    Prime numbers are distributed in pretty much the same way as they were before the proof.

    The proof is mathematics for the sake of mathematics. The Riemann Hypothesis has been accepted as true true for over a hundred years, so practical applications that derive from it already exist.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @01:13PM (#24033239)

    Section two of the wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis) is the great importance here. If indeed there is a proof of Riemann's Hypothesis, then there is a similar proof of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, which is in turn a big step in finding the exact distribution of prime numbers.

    Finding the distribution of prime numbers has epic consequences, like breaking most encryption, for starters.

  • Re:not so fast (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Neil Strickland ( 1064886 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @02:04PM (#24034035) Homepage
    That's true, but most of them are obvious drivel. I have looked through this one, and it is clearly a real attempt by a genuine mathematician who understands the relevant background. I'd still bet on it being wrong, but not stupidly wrong.
  • Re:Tried to RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PlatyPaul ( 690601 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @03:04PM (#24034865) Homepage Journal
    Here's another easy-to-grasp one: public key encryption (think: credit card purchases online) is dependent upon the use of large primes. Large primes are currently not the easiest/fastest to find - what if you knew better where to look for them?
  • Re:Dirty Words (Score:3, Interesting)

    by h2k1 ( 661151 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @05:21PM (#24036479)
    in portuguese, 50135.50738 (nice breasts).
  • by tobiah ( 308208 ) on Thursday July 03, 2008 @01:01AM (#24039943)
    page 4 for equations 3.2-3.4 he assumes g0 can be bounded because it has compact support on (0, Inf). This is false, a function that is continuous on all of (0, Inf) also has compact support on (0, Inf). That sort of thing is why functions with compact support are only interesting on a bounded domain.

    If you let g0(x)=1/x, then the integral at the bottom of page 38 blows up to Inf.

    I don't see a way to fix that, Theorem 8.6 is pretty important to this proof, and probably false. Those bits represent Li's major contribution to the problem, the rest of it is restating previous results.

  • Disproof (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tobiah ( 308208 ) on Thursday July 03, 2008 @03:10AM (#24040453)

    Ah well, not quite right. But let g0(x)=x works, because there's no integrability condition. Thm 8.6 then falls apart because h0 is no longer in L^2(C), or V(h) is not an operator, take your pick.

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