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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Good enough!
I love these mathtists waste all this time "on proofs and other pointless projects like this one. Such a weird bunch.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context