this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023

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No Stupid Questions

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What are the most mindblowing things in mathematics? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

233 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What concepts or facts do you know from math that is mind blowing, awesome, or simply fascinating?

Here are some I would like to share:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems: There are some problems in math so difficult that it can never be solved no matter how much time you put into it.
Halting problem: It is impossible to write a program that can figure out whether or not any input program loops forever or finishes running. (Undecidablity)

The Busy Beaver function

Now this is the mind blowing one. What is the largest non-infinite number you know? Graham's Number? TREE(3)? TREE(TREE(3))? This one will beat it easily.

The Busy Beaver function produces the fastest growing number that is theoretically possible. These numbers are so large we don't even know if you can compute the function to get the value even with an infinitely powerful PC.
In fact, just the mere act of being able to compute the value would mean solving the hardest problems in mathematics.
Σ(1) = 1
Σ(4) = 13
Σ(6) > 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10 (10s are stacked on each other)
Σ(17) > Graham's Number
Σ(27) If you can compute this function the Goldbach conjecture is false.
Σ(744) If you can compute this function the Riemann hypothesis is false.

Sources:

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 year ago (33 children)

The four-color theorem is pretty cool.

You can take any map of anything and color it in using only four colors so that no adjacent “countries” are the same color. Often it can be done with three!

Maybe not the most mind blowing but it’s neat.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (23 children)

What about a hypothetical country that is shaped like a donut, and the hole is filled with four small countries? One of the countries must have the color of one of its neighbors, no?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There are some rules about the kind of map this applies to. One of them is "no countries inside other countries."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not true, see @BitSound's comment.

It does have to be topologically planar (may not be the technical term), though. No donut worlds.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The regions need to be contiguous and intersect at a nontrivial boundary curve. This type of map can be identified uniquely with a planar graph by placing a vertex inside each region and drawing an edge from one point to another in each adjacent region through the bounding curve.

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