A Japanese professor called Shinichi Mochizuki claims to have proved a famous conjecture called the ABC Conjecture, which most number theorists reckoned was decades from being solved.
He has developed a theory called Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory, which on that page he tries to sketch in everyday terms (hence my title).
It is apparently an extension of a specialised and largely conjectural topic called Anabelian geometry. Given that hardly anyone else was studying this, at the moment no one else in the world can fully understand his several hundred page proof (although many are scrabbling to catch up).
Some experts have been discussing it in this thread on MathOverflow, and on various blogs I imagine.
edit: Sasguru, could you have a quick flick through the relevant papers and check he hasn't made any obvious mistakes?
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory II: Hodge-Arakelov-theoretic Evaluation
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory III: Canonical Splittings of the Log-theta-lattice
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory IV: Log-volume Computations and Set-theoretic Foundations
He has developed a theory called Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory, which on that page he tries to sketch in everyday terms (hence my title).
It is apparently an extension of a specialised and largely conjectural topic called Anabelian geometry. Given that hardly anyone else was studying this, at the moment no one else in the world can fully understand his several hundred page proof (although many are scrabbling to catch up).
Some experts have been discussing it in this thread on MathOverflow, and on various blogs I imagine.
edit: Sasguru, could you have a quick flick through the relevant papers and check he hasn't made any obvious mistakes?
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory II: Hodge-Arakelov-theoretic Evaluation
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory III: Canonical Splittings of the Log-theta-lattice
Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory IV: Log-volume Computations and Set-theoretic Foundations
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