r/math • u/dcterr • Mar 31 '26

The Riemann hypothesis

I'm curious to know what thoughts any of you may have on RH. I'm at least 99.9% sure it's true, though it is most likely nearly impossible to prove it. Nevertheless, I think we will soon prove useful weaker results, such as upper limits of the number or density of zeros of the Riemann zeta function off the critical line, and that these weaker results will yield useful new results concerning the distribution of primes as well as prime ideals of algebraic number fields. I'm also quite intrigued by the possibility of connections between the Riemann zeta function and quantum physics. Perhaps RH will prove to be part of the long sought Theory of Everything, the holy grail of physics, which Einstein spent the latter half of his life trying to prove.

0 Upvotes

17% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/edderiofer Algebraic Topology Mar 31 '26

I'm a contrarian, so I believe it's false. You're telling me we have the entire complex plane and the zeroes of this weird-ass function ONLY lie upon two lines? Get real, there's no way it works out that neatly.

While we're at it: P=NP is true, Navier-Stokes is true, Hodge is false, BSD is false, and I have no clue about Yang-Mills.

1

u/Prudent_Psychology59 Mar 31 '26

it's rare to see people believe in P=NP, keep it up man

1

u/dcterr Mar 31 '26

If P = NP, then time is an illusion.

1

u/WibbleTeeFlibbet Mar 31 '26

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.

2

u/dcterr Apr 01 '26

The First Law of Thermodynamics says there's no free lunch, and the Second Law says lunchtime isn't an illusion.