RAH pastes:
Tim Radford, science editor Tuesday September 7, 2004
The Guardian Mathematicians could be on the verge of solving two separate million dollar problems. If they are right - still a big if - and somebody really has cracked the so-called Riemann hypothesis, financial disaster might follow. Suddenly all cryptic codes could be breakable. No internet transaction would be safe.
Bullshit. A constructive proof of NP=P would doom strong crypto. A proof of the Riemann hypothesis MIGHT lead to polynomial time factoring, which would break RSA, but leave the rest of cryptography largely untouched. The Guardian needs to raise the bar a bit for that which it alleges to be "Science Writing." Louis de Branges "proves" the Riemann Hypothesis every year, by the way. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"