Mathematicians Are Getting Closer to Translating an ‘Alien Language'
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Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
First proposed in 2012, the Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT) is a devilishly difficult math theory that experts describe as an 'alien language.'
Although only a few mathematicians around the world understand any small portion of IUT, a 28-year-old tech worker recently made significant gains toward decoding the theory.
This could help make progress in understanding math enigmas like the ABC Conjecture and Fermat's Last Theorem.
It's likely that you won't understand any of the mathematics in this article, but you'd be in good company—most mathematicians don't understand it, either. That's because we're talking about the famously difficult Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT), first proposed across 2,000 pages in 2012 by Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki and vigorously debated in the 13 years since: is it a revolutionary way of understanding mathematics or a complete waste of time?
The best way to think about IUT is that it's a completely novel understanding of mathematics that makes a drastic departure from the theorems taught in universities around the world. According to mathematics expert Kato Fumimot, speaking to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the theory is almost an otherworldly creation.
'Imagine an alien coming to Earth who can only speak an extraterrestrial language,' Fumimot told the SCMP. 'If he were to give a speech in front of a large group of Earthlings, surely no one would understand what he is saying, and no matter how many times he repeats it, there would be no progress.'
Whole branches of mathematics have been set up to try to interpret the secrets of IUT. According to some estimates, only two dozen or so mathematicians in the world can even begin to understand this mysterious language. However, it seems that a promising new mathematician may have recently been added to their number.
Zhou Zhongpeng isn't a learned professor or noted mathematician, but a former doctoral student turned tech worker—one that happens to be obsessed with learning IUT. After decoding key elements of IUT and proposing novel refinements and explanations of the ABC conjecture, he sent his work—uploaded to the preprint server arXiv—to the theory's creator, Mochizuki, and Ivan Fesenko, one of the few mathematicians who has made some headway in understanding IUT. According to SCMP and Interesting Engineering, Fesenko immediately reached out to Zhou and told him to fly to his campus in Westlake University in China. Zhou promptly quit his tech job and began working with Fesenko.
If mathematicians at large are ever able to truly learn IUT, they could be able to find more efficient solutions to some of the field's most devilish problems. Take, for example, Fermat's Last Theorem. Formulated in 1637 and named after French mathematician Pierre de Fermat, the theorem states that no three positive integers (a, b, and c) can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn where 'n' is greater than two. Although this seems simple, it took more than 350 years to prove it, and the solution ran 130 pages long. Zhou's work could solve such a theorem in fewer steps and also prove useful for other mathematical enigmas.
For now, IUT remains a mostly an 'alien language.' And because so many of the theory's adherents live in Japan, New Scientist says that, effectively, the proof is only true in that country. Only time will tell whether that claim spreads to eventually envelop the world.
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