And the spelling molecule is evidently still a work in progress. 🤣
The author says “the solution could be as simple as finding one odd perfect number” but that should surely read
“the solution is as simple as finding one odd perfect number” since any other solution would be very complex, a theoretical reasoning of why no odd number can be perfect.
I wonder how any larger even perfect numbers have been found in the search? Or if any theory exists to predict them, or if they just find the by trial and error?
I find prime numbers very interesting too, (numbers that have no factors other than themselves and 1), I understand there is a theory to prove there cannot be a largest prime number, but the frequency of them keeps dropping off very slowly. In ranges of odd numbers like 1,001 to 2,001 about 35% of the odd numbers are primes (no even numbers above 2 can be primes), by 1,000,000 to 1,001,000 it is down to about 20%, but it stays well above 10% a long, long way up into a realm where “largest known prime numbers” are found by very complicated computer programs. I believe the largest known prime number has 10^24 digits. The progress made in this computer age is considerable, in the medieval period the largest known prime number was only in the low million range. Once again, there is no universal theory predicting a progression of prime numbers, they tend to be more frequent in certain equation generators like 2^n - 1, but there is nothing like a series predictor. So every so often a person with access to a very large computer and time to waste comes up with the newest largest known prime. We know from the theory that this search can never end, but I suppose you could say, any number (prime or not) that is greater than the number of particles in the universe cannot be used to count anything that exists, so it is an irrelevant number.