The “Jump” of Chaitin’s Omega Number
Gregory Chaitin explains, “For any infinity, there’s a bigger infinity, which is the infinity of all subsets of the previous step”In last week’s podcast, “The Chaitin Interview V: Chaitin’s Number,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks asked mathematician Gregory Chaitin (best known for Chaitin’s unknowable number) if the unknowable number could prove (or disprove) Goldbach’s Conjecture that every even number can be expressed as the sum of two primes. This task is harder than it first appears because even numbers go on indefinitely. A proof that Christian Goldbach (1690–1764) was right or wrong must show that even numbers must be like that, no matter how big they are or how many of them there are. This time out, Dr. Marks and Dr. Chaitin discuss what we can know about Omega numbers — and where famous mathematicians are buried. This Read More ›
