Has The Poincare Conjecture Been Solved?

Zack Coburn writes "An article in the Boston Globe alludes to the Poincare Conjecture being solved, possibly. For those who are unfamiliar with the conjecture, the article gives a brief description: "To solve it, one would have to prove something that no one seriously doubts: that, just as there is only one way to bend a two-dimensional plane into a shape without holes -- the sphere -- there is likewise only one way to bend three-dimensional space into a shape that has no holes. Though abstract, the conjecture has powerful practical implications: Solve it and you may be able to describe the shape of the universe." Apparently Grigory Perelman may have proved it, which would mean a $1 million award from the Clay Mathematics Institute." We've previously discussed other possible Poincare proofs.

Comments

Has the Poincare Conjecture Been Solved?

[James A. C. Joyce]

No.

(It even says in the freaking article stub that the proof is merely alluded to, for crying out loud.)

Re:Who Cares! or An Exciting Time To Be Alive

[noonien_soong]

You seem to be misinformed. The Riemann hypothesis has not been proven. If it had, we would have heard about it; it is one of the current holy grails of mathematics. The 16th Hilbert problem has not been solved. The student in question only claimed to have solved part of it, and she was dead wrong. Positrons have nothing to do with LEDS, transistors, or diodes, and QED was not relevant to the invention of any of them. "structuring matters behaviors, including time-dependEnt transformations"---what does that even mean? Nothing. You made it up. Having a proof of Poincare's conjecture has absolutely nothing to do with crumple zones, or any engineering problem, for that matter.

I agree that it's an exciting time to be alive, but if you are as ignorant about science as your post would suggest, you would do well to confine your comments to generalities and stop spreading misinformation.