Will the rug be pulled out from under the numbers as we know them? (Image: Andrea Pistolesi/The Image Bank/Getty)
Whole numbers, addition and multiplication are among the first things schoolchildren learn, but a new mathematical proof shows that even the world’s best minds have plenty more to learn about these seemingly simple concepts.
of Kyoto University in Japan has torn up these most basic of mathematical concepts and reconstructed them as never before. The result is a fiendishly complicated proof for the decades-old “ABC conjecture” – and an alternative mathematical universe that should prise open many other outstanding enigmas.…
