http://www.nature.com/news/two-hundred-terabyte-maths-proof-is-largest-ever-1.19990
Three computer scientists have announced the largest-ever mathematics proof: a file that comes in at a whopping 200 terabytes, roughly equivalent to all the digitized text held by the US Library of Congress. The researchers have created a 68-gigabyte compressed version of their solution — which would allow anyone with about 30,000 hours of spare processor time to download, reconstruct and verify it — but a human could never hope to read through it.
Three computer scientists have announced the largest-ever mathematics proof: a file that comes in at a whopping 200 terabytes, roughly equivalent to all the digitized text held by the US Library of Congress. The researchers have created a 68-gigabyte compressed version of their solution — which would allow anyone with about 30,000 hours of spare processor time to download, reconstruct and verify it — but a human could never hope to read through it.
http://digg.com/video/southern-ocean-storm
"The only difference between a ship and a jail is that you might be able to escape from a jail."
-Samuel Johnson
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/How-Not-to-be-Wrong
The book starts with a story about Abraham Wald, an Eastern European mathematician who worked for the American government during World War II. One day the military came to him and said, “We have a problem. We send our planes overseas, and when they come back, their engines are fine, but their tails are riddled with bullet holes. If we put more armor on the tails, though, the planes get too heavy to fly. Can you help us figure out how to protect the planes’ tails better?”
And he said, “No.”
They were surprised, but then he explained that they were asking the wrong question. “You need to put more armor where there aren’t bullet holes. Clearly, when the plane gets hit in the tail, it makes it back to you. Your problem is the planes that get hit in the engine, because those are the ones that aren’t coming back.”
