In a free story in the July 3 Nature, George Szpiro tells the tale of Thomas Hales and his attempt to prove Kepler's sphere-packing conjecture. Hales' proof uses an exhaustive computer exploration of 5,000 packing arrangements and 100,000 inequalities. After four years of review at Annals of Mathematics, the referees ran out of energy and gave up. They believe the proof is correct but have been unable to finish the job of making sure. The editor will publish Hales' paper next year, but with a note explaining that the proof has not yet been completely verified. (Thanks to Darius Cuplinskas.) (PS: Would Hales have had better luck if he'd distributed a preprint in an open-access repository like arXiv? The same thought must have occurred to Hales, but late in the game, for he deposited his paper in arXiv on May 1.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/04/2003 05:33:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
