Chapter 1390 - The Crushed Preprint Archive
Chapter 1390: The Crushed Preprint Archive
The ABC conjecture is solved!
Whether it was for the mathematics field or for the future of human civilization, this was definitely a historic day.
As the manager of the arXiv preprint electronic archive, Cornell University felt this more than anyone else.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University.
The tranquility of the morning was broken by a sudden accident.
The arXiv database, which had been running fairly stable for a long time, suddenly seemed to have suffered a violent DOS attack and was overwhelmed by the explosive increase in traffic.
“Sh*t! Is it a special holiday today? Why is the server stuck…”
“The number of visits has increased a hundredfold… Jesus, what happened last night?”
“God knows! Call Los Alamos National Laboratory quickly and ask them to use the backup server!”
“Already done… Forget about it, there must be a problem with such a huge amount of visits, this is definitely not normal!”
The laboratory was a mess.
The several professors who were invited did their best with the paralyzed server, but they were helpless.
Arxiv’s traffic had always been relatively stable, with one morning peak and one evening peak. Most of the time, everyone searched for new research progress in several research directions that they tracked during these two peak time periods.
Because of this, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was responsible for operating the server, allocated additional server resources for arXiv. However, the plan still couldn’t keep up with the changes.
The additional spare server resource was just a drop in the bucket. The surge in traffic instantly paralyzed the entire website, no one could log in…
Dr. Osmond, who was in charge of maintaining the database, was sweating anxiously. The situation was out of control, so he immediately called the Los Alamos National Laboratory and asked the engineer there to voluntarily pull the brakes on the server before starting the inspection. He began to search for the cause of the failure.
Arxiv was not the same as other non-academic databases for profit. As an open electronic preprint library, even if the traffic increased by several times, they would not use it for profit. Therefore, they had nothing to gain from this.
Dr. Osmond stopped the system engineer walking by and asked anxiously, “What about the Los Alamos National Laboratory? How is the troubleshooting of the server going?”
The expression on the engineer’s face was filled with solemnity.
Although they had encountered similar situations before, it was far less serious than the situation they were facing now.
“The cause of the fault is still being investigated… There is no news yet.”
“Damn it!” Dr. Osmond couldn’t help but explode, “Which b*stard has nothing better to do, trying to take down our site? Go hack the federal reserve instead!”
“Maybe their paper was rejected, they want revenge?” The engineer shrugged his shoulders. However, Dr. Osmond instantly rejected the hypothesis.
“Impossible, no one would be that stupid.”
It was quite difficult to be rejected by arXiv because even “folk mathematics” had a separate classification here for scholars to entertain themselves.
Only those who were not sure about the authority of their papers were to be “rejected” because of non-compliance with the norm. Thus, Dr. Osmond ruled out this possibility without hesitation.
Just when the group of people broke out in cold sweat, they heard footsteps coming from outside the laboratory.
A man in a suit walked in and spoke.
“The results from the investigation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are here!”
Dr. Osmond didn’t hesitate for even a second. He immediately looked at him and asked anxiously, “What’s going on?!”
“The proof of the ABC conjecture…”
Dr. Osmond was stunned. He looked at him in surprise and asked, “The proof of the ABC conjecture?! What do you mean…”
“The engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory retrieved the error log and found that almost all the traffic was directed to the same third-level domain name.” The expression on the man’s face was like he had just seen a ghost. He gulped and said, “I can’t believe it! Just one preprint, taking down the whole server… This is the first time I have seen anything like this in my life!”
…
The outage of the arXiv server was just the beginning.
The news that the ABC conjecture was proven quickly spread across the entire mathematics community on the Internet as the astonishment spread like a tsunami.
Because the arXiv server was completely down, many people who could not download the paper had to go on the LSPM forum that Lu Zhou left on his personal page, to share and exchange information about the ABC conjecture.
On the other hand, at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
Dr. Woolley Vernal, who was studying at the department of mathematics, walked quickly into Professor Sarnak’s office.
Because he was so emotional, he even forgot to knock on the door. He pushed open the door of the office and spoke with an incoherent tone.
“Professor!”
Professor Sarnak frowned slightly. He stopped writing and looked up at his student.
“Good morning, Mr. Vernal. What happened? You even forgot to knock before opening my door.”
“Sorry! But this is too amazing!” Vernal gulped and continued in a trembling tone, “You have no idea—”
The sound of the pen cap hitting the desktop interrupted his speech. Professor Sarnak spoke in an impatient tone.
“I hope this won’t take long, otherwise—”
“The LSPM research team! Just an hour ago, they uploaded the complete proof process of the ABC conjecture on arXiv!”
LSPM research group…
A complete proof of the ABC conjecture?!
The moment Sarnak heard these words, his eyes were as wide as a ping-pong ball. He immediately stood up from behind the desk and said anxiously, “What about the paper? Have you downloaded it yet?”
“No…” Dr. Vernal gulped. With a bitter expression on his face, he said, “When I discovered this, the arXiv website already went down.”
Went down?!
Sarnak was stunned.
It took about five minutes before he finally recovered.
He looked at the corner of the office desk. The date of April 30th was printed on a calendar.
Sarnak thought of what Professor Fefferman had said some time ago. His pupils were full of disbelief.
They really did it before the end of the month?!
I can’t believe this!
On the other hand, inside the same building.
Professor Fefferman was sitting in his office. He turned his attention to the calendar on the desk after hearing the news that the ABC conjecture was proven.
He sighed and spoke to himself.
“Damn it…”
I should have been more persistent.
If I had convinced Sarnak to bet, I would have won big!
He would have bought my coffee for at least a week…