Banker Offers $1M To Solve Beal Conjecture 216
oxide7 writes "A Texas banker with a knack for numbers has offered $1 million for anyone who can solve a complex math equation that has stumped mathematicians since the 1980s. The Beal Conjecture states that the only solutions to the equation A^x + B^y = C^z, when A, B and C are positive integers, and x, y and z are positive integers greater than two, are those in which A, B and C have a common factor. Like most number theories, it's "easy to say but extremely difficult to prove.""
Couldn't you just make up any old equation... (Score:3, Interesting)
... along with some postulated constraints and ask people to prove them? Whats so special about this one - does it have some mathematical relevance?
Re:Couldn't you just make up any old equation... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's essentially what Carl Friedrich Gauss said when he was challenged to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Something on the lines of: "I have no real interest in such endeavors since I could easily put forward a multitude of propositions which one could neither prove nor disprove."
Re:Or it could come full circle... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Brute force? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe if I present it in the form of a cryptography scheme for terrorist communications...