It is the Goldbach conjecture (1742), which states that any even number larger than 2 can be represented as the sum of two prime numbers.
Today, this problem has been partially solved for numbers up to 4 x 10 to the power 18 but still remains unsolved.
Maybe one of you dramanauts is neurodivergent enough to solve it and bring humanity one step ahead of the bozos that used to exist in the 18th century?
I find it kind of cool that the oldest unsolved problem is less than 300 years old, and not like a thousand years old or some other crazy number like that. It shows that humanity has actually advanced enough to solve every single technical problem from the past millennia over time, and that we are today in a league of our own.
Additional fun fact:
In 2016 some math nerds ( Maryna Viazovska ) figured out how to pack a sphere in 8 dimensions. I have no idea what that means but good for mathematical progress I suppose.
I wonder how long it will be before the oldest unsolved problem for humans will be in the 19th century.
In any case, I feel like we should all feel humbled by the fact that across billions of humans nobody could solve a math problem over the course of 281 years.
We aren't perfect, and we have yet a long way to grow. Human intelligence will continue to increase by 2 points every decade, which means a new tier of smarter humans every 75 years.
Once we hit the great stagnation, we will reach double our capacity every 75 years, the EU has already hit that point, we are all just catching up to it.
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!mathematics !math solve this
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its funny how /r/numbertheory is a containment sub for math wackjobs that do this stuff
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Vixra is even better. Arxiv is the website for professional mathematicians to share their work. It requires credentials to post. Someone got pissed and made Vixra in response as a free-to-post website. It's now exclusively the bailiwick of schizophrenics.
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https://old.reddit.com/r/numbertheory/comments/1dnxpti/pi_is_an_instruction_set_to_tie_different/
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There
has to be a good story 
with that, like he gained control 
and they just let him have it.
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i think its always been a containment sub to attract the crazies from posting on /r/math. the oldest post i could find was 6yrs ago (the sub is 14 years old though?) and its always been about the collatz or reinmann hypothesis etc. plus the only mod is a /r/math mod and he usually just dunks on the crazies and their "proofs"
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This isn't the oldest unsolved problem by a longshot. The congruent number problem was explored by the Arabs in 1100. There's some historical references to the twin prime conjecture dating back even further. And two related questions about perfect numbers, namely how many there are and if any odd ones exist, have been around since the ancient Greeks.
Anyway, here's Goldbach's conjecture proven:
Goldbach's weak conjecture, which was proven in 2013, states that all odd integers >7 can be written as the sum of three odd primes. Therefore, it follows that all even numbers greater than 8 can be written as the sum of three odd primes plus 1. 2k = p1 + p2 + p3 -1 1 for all k > 4. Rewrite thsis as 2k - p1 + 1 = p2 + p3. All even numbers >8 can be written in the form 2k - p3 +1 for k >4, as that's an even number minus an odd plus an odd, so even. Therefore the left hand side of the equation represents all even numbers >8, and the right hand side is two primes, so we've shown that all even numbers >8 can be written as the sum of two primes. Since 4 = 2+2, 6=3+3, and 8=5+3, we have proven that all even numbers >2 can be written as the sum of two primes. Goldbach's conjecture is true.
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Cite your sources: viXra.org
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Flaw in your proof. There may exist an even number 2n such that, for all k > n, there exists no p3 such that p3 = 2k - 2n - 1 and 2k = p1 + p2 + p3 + 1
In fact, if you combine the equations, you get
2k = p1 + p2 + 2k - 2n - 1 + 1
0 = p1 + p2 - 2n
2n = p1 + p2
So you're assuming what you're trying to solve
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Yep, that's it.
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I barely survived real analysis 1. No way in heck I'm solving a problem like that.
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