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Gerry Myerson
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Hall conjectured the existence of a positive constant $C$ such that if $y^2\ne x^3$ then $$|y^2-x^3|\gt C\sqrt{|x|}$$ This has not been disproved, but is considered unlikely to be true. Nowadays one often calls Hall's Conjecture the weaker statement that for any positive $\epsilon$ there is a constant $c(\epsilon)$ such that if $y^2\ne x^3$ then $$|y^2-x^3|\gt C(\epsilon)x^{{1\over2}-\epsilon}$$ See this link.

See also Noam Elkies' page, http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/hall.html

Gerry Myerson
  • 39.9k
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  • 247