The Hidden Flaw in Mathematics That Changed History 🔍

Not everything that is true can be proven. This discovery transformed infinity, changed the course of a world war and led to the modern computer. This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The first 200 people to sign up via https://brilliant.org/veritasium get 20% off a yearly subscription.

Special thanks to Prof. Asaf Karagila for consultation on set theory and specific rewrites, to Prof. Alex Kontorovich for reviews of earlier drafts, Prof. Toby ‘Qubit’ Cubitt for the help with the spectral gap, to Henry Reich for the helpful feedback and comments on the video.

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References:

Dunham, W. (2013, July). A Note on the Origin of the Twin Prime Conjecture. In Notices of the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 63-65). International Press of Boston. — https://ve42.co/Dunham2013

Conway, J. (1970). The game of life. Scientific American, 223(4), 4. — https://ve42.co/Conway1970

Churchill, A., Biderman, S., Herrick, A. (2019). Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete. ArXiv. — https://ve42.co/Churchill2019

Gaifman, H. (2006). Naming and Diagonalization, from Cantor to Godel to Kleene. Logic Journal of the IGPL, 14(5), 709-728. — https://ve42.co/Gaifman2006

Lénárt, I. (2010). Gauss, Bolyai, Lobachevsky–in General Education?(Hyperbolic Geometry as Part of the Mathematics Curriculum). In Proceedings of Bridges 2010: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture (pp. 223-230). Tessellations Publishing. — https://ve42.co/Lnrt2010

Attribution of Poincare’s quote, The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991. — https://ve42.co/Poincare

Irvine, A. D., & Deutsch, H. (1995). Russell’s paradox. — https://ve42.co/Irvine1995

Gödel, K. (1992). On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems. Courier Corporation. — https://ve42.co/Godel1931

Russell, B., & Whitehead, A. (1973). Principia Mathematica [PM], vol I, 1910, vol. II, 1912, vol III, 1913, vol. I, 1925, vol II & III, 1927, Paperback Edition to* 56. Cambridge UP. — https://ve42.co/Russel1910

Gödel, K. (1986). Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936 (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, USA. — https://ve42.co/Godel1986

Cubitt, T. S., Perez-Garcia, D., & Wolf, M. M. (2015). Undecidability of the spectral gap. Nature, 528(7581), 207-211. — https://ve42.co/Cubitt2015

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Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Paul Peijzel, Crated Comments, Anna, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, Oleksii Leonov, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, Jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Pindex, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal

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Executive Producer: Derek Muller
Writers: Adam Becker, Jonny Hyman, Derek Muller
Animators: Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Ivy Tello, Jonny Hyman
SFX & Music: Jonny Hyman
Camerapeople: Derek Muller, Raquel Nuno
Editors: Derek Muller
Producers: Petr Lebedev, Emily Zhang
Additional video supplied by Getty Images
Thumbnail by Geoff Barrett

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