Reply to post: Re: Nice.

Finally! A solution to 42 – the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything

Carpet Deal 'em
Boffin

Re: Nice.

It's highly doubtful that Fermat actually had a proof. First, he never wrote about it again for the thirty or so years he lived after the famous scribble(despite posing specific exponent versions as challenges to other mathematicians of the day); second, the actual proof was over a hundred pages and relied on recently invented techniques(which would mean a proof based solely on early/mid 1600s math would probably be well over a thousand pages - a magnitude that would warrant language stronger than "this margin is too narrow to contain").

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