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'Ten Martini' Proof Uses Number Theory to Explain Quantum Fractals
The proof, known to be so hard that a mathematician once offered 10 martinis to whoever could figure it out, connects quantum mechanics to infinitely intricate mathematical structures.
In 1974, five years before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter was a graduate student in physics at the University of Oregon. Douglas Hofstadter is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which examines the self-referential nature of mathematics, music and more. The breakdown of the proof in these broader contexts also implied that the beautiful fractal patterns that had emerged — the Cantor sets, the Hofstadter butterfly — were nothing more than a mathematical curiosity, something that would disappear once the equation was made more realistic.
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