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17 votes
1 answer
2k views

What is known about the relationship between Fermat's last theorem and Peano Arithmetic?

As far as I know, whether Fermat's Last Theorem is provable in Peano Arithmetic is an open problem. What is known about this problem? In particular, what is known about the arithmetic systems $PA + \...
Christopher King's user avatar
57 votes
2 answers
7k views

What arithmetic information is contained in the algebraic K-theory of the integers

I'm always looking for applications of homotopy theory to other fields, mostly as a way to make my talks more interesting or to motivate the field to non-specialists. It seems like most talks about ...
David White's user avatar
  • 30.3k
42 votes
7 answers
3k views

How would one even begin to try to prove that a simple number-theoretic statement is undecidable?

This question is closely related to this one: Knuth's intuition that Goldbach might be unprovable. It stems from my ignorance about non-standard models of arithmetic. In a comment on the other ...
gowers's user avatar
  • 29k
17 votes
3 answers
3k views

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and the complexity of arithmetic

In How complicated can structures be? Jouko Väänänen says: The guiding result of mathematical logic is the Incompleteness Theorem of Gödel, which says that the logical structure of number theory ...
Hans-Peter Stricker's user avatar