パンサー尾形貴弘が数学の難問を大真面目に解説する「笑わない数学」。今回は「ポアンカレ予想」。宇宙はざっくりどんな形をしているのか？！トポロジーの難問に挑む！
ポアンカレは１９世紀末にフランスで活躍した天才数学者。彼が生前に立てた、数学の重要な予想がある。しかしポアンカレ自身には証明できず、その後１世紀にわたって世界中の数学者たちも解決できずにいた。ポアンカレの予想をやさしく言い換えると、この宇宙の形はざっくり丸いのかどうか、それを宇宙のなかにいる私たちが知る術はあるか？といえる。世紀の難問が２００６年にロシアの数学者によって解決されるまでの数奇な物語。
Panther Takahiro Ogata explains difficult mathematical problems in a very serious manner in "Math without Laughing". This time it is "Poincaré Conjecture". What is the shape of the universe? We tackle the hard problem of topology! Poincaré was a genius mathematician active in France at the end of the 19th century. There is an important mathematical prediction he made before his death. However, Poincaré himself could not prove it, and for a century afterward, mathematicians around the world were also unable to solve it. To put Poincaré's prediction in a simple way, is there any way for us in the universe to know whether the shape of the universe is roughly round or not? In other words, how do we know if the shape of the universe is roughly round or not? This is the bizarre story of how the century-old problem was solved by a Russian mathematician in 2006.
