Skip to main content
6 of 18
added 80 characters in body
GH from MO
  • 105.3k
  • 8
  • 293
  • 398

This is a supplement to Lucia's answer. His/her heuristic analysis suggests that there are infinitely many odd $m$'s such that the largest square dividing $m^3-2$ exceeds $9m^2$, contradicting the conjecture.

On the other hand, the abc conjecture implies that the largest square dividing $m^3-2$ is $\ll_\epsilon m^{2+\epsilon}$ for any $\epsilon>0$, which indicates that a slightly weaker version of the conjecture (i.e. one with a more restrictive constraint on the variables) is probably true.

Some calculations with SAGE show that for $m<10^7$ there are only two instances where the largest square dividing $m^3-2$ exceeds $m^2$, namely $m=3$ and $m=100$. (Update: Noam Elkies has extended the range to $m<10^8$, see his comments.) I found five further values with a square divisor exceeding $m^2/2$, and these are $\{1244,11317,296428,714417,722428\}$.

GH from MO
  • 105.3k
  • 8
  • 293
  • 398