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Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of Unknowns Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of the Unknown

Schanuel's conjecture

In the mid 1960s American mathematician Stephen Schanuel devised a complex mathematical conjecture regarding the 'transcendence degree' of certain 'field extensions' of the rational numbers.

Formally stated :

Given any n complex numbers z1, …, zn that are linearly independent over the rational numbers Q, the field extension Q (z1, …, zn, ez1 , …, ezn) has transcendence degree at least n over Q

Source :Wikipedia

At present, the conjecture has neither been proved or disproved.

If it is eventually proved, it could have profound implications for exploring the nature of Irrational numbersplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigIrrational numbers

unknowable

An irrational number is a real number that can't be expressed as a ratio of integers, i.e. as a fraction.

Put another way, it can never be specified with absolute accuracy.

Well known examples are π and √2

For many irrational numbers, relatively simple mathematical proofs exist which show that it's impossible to ever arrive at a finite solution. For example,
such as π and the natural logarithm e.

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