Problems
Everything in the archive: the problem as it was posed, what has been attempted against it, and who checked each attempt. The mark down the left of the list says who has looked — a person, a machine, or nobody yet. Human reviews and machine checks are counted separately and are never added together.
24 problems
Han and Jiang asked whether being of klt type is an open condition in flat families of varieties. It is not.
For a simple 3-polytope with at least three faces of size at least 7, must p_6 ≥ 39/20 + p_3/2 - p_5/4 - ∑_k ≥ 7 p_k? Five minimal ten-face counterexamples refute the printed inequality.
Huybrechts conjectured that for every Brauer class alpha on a hyperkahler variety X, the index divides the period raised to the power dim(X)/2, strengthening the usual period-index conjecture. Disproved on certain hyperkahler fourfolds, in…
Lassak conjectured that a reduced planar convex body of thickness Δ has area at most (π/4)Δ^2, the value for the disc. False: an explicit reduced body of thickness 1 has area 0.786215… > π/4 = 0.785398…, given by a closed-form support…
Sabok asked whether the compact convex set S'(X) attached to a separable metric space of diameter at most one is always a simplex, and whether S'(U_1) is the Poulsen simplex. Both answers are negative, with obstructions already visible for…
Kusner conjectured in 1983 that the maximum number of points in R^n that are pairwise at ℓ_p-distance one is exactly n+1 for every 2 < p < ∞, as in the Euclidean case. False: an explicit configuration of n+2 equilateral points exists for…
Conjectured upper bound on how many pairs among n points in the plane can be exactly one unit apart.
For an arrangement of n hyperplanes in P^3_C with ℓ intersection lines and p intersection points where at least three hyperplanes meet, the refined form of Purdy's inequality expects p - ℓ + n + 2 ≥ 0. An explicit arrangement built from…
For semifree noncommutative differential graded algebras over a nontrivial computable unital commutative ring, are stable tame isomorphism, quasi-isomorphism, or derived Morita equivalence algorithmically decidable? All three are…
Wegner conjectured in 1965 that every finite family R of axis-parallel rectangles satisfies τ(R) ≤ 2ν(R) - 1, where τ is the minimum number of piercing points and ν the largest pairwise-disjoint subfamily. False, by an explicit…
A conjecture attributed to Kontsevich holds that strata of quadratic differentials are aspherical, that is orbifold K(π,1) spaces. False: when there are at least four zeros or poles, no connected component of a genus-one stratum is an…
VibeMathed records no statement for this problem. See erdosproblems.com for the original.
For a family F of an odd number n of unit disks in the plane, let OA(F) be the area covered by an odd number of disks. It was conjectured that OA(F) ≥ π, the area of a single disk. False: configurations exist with smaller odd area.
VibeMathed records no statement for this problem. See erdosproblems.com for the original.
Pozdnyakov, Willatt, Bartók, Ortner, Csányi and Ceriotti showed in 2020 that the 2-, 3- and 4-point correlations of an atomic neighbour density are incomplete: noncongruent environments can share them exactly. Every degeneracy found since…
Let U_n⊂ R^n be the difference polytope of a regular n-simplex such that U_n circumscribes a sphere of diameter 1. Then every set of diameter 1 in R^n is covered by a rotated copy of U_n.
Ciliberto, Knutsen, Lesieutre, Lozovanu, Miranda, Mustopa and Testa asked a question about effective divisors of positive self-intersection on smooth projective surfaces. The answer is negative, witnessed by a very non-movable effective…
Kinoshita conjectured that every embedded projective plane in S^4 is reducible. False: an irreducible embedded projective plane exists in S^4. The construction also answers both parts of Problem 4.37 of the Kirby problem list.
Can a Cohn-Elkies auxiliary function certify the best known sphere packing in dimension 36 as optimal? No. An explicit dual-feasible point for the Cohn-Elkies linear program, built from weight-18 modular forms for Γ_0(24), shows the…
Ziegler proved every simplicial d-dimensional 0/1-polytope has at most 2d vertices, and asked whether attaining 2d vertices forces central symmetry (i.e. a 0/1 cross-polytope). Known true for d ≤ 6; open since ~2000.