Development

A 150-year-old conjecture is shown false with a five-charge counterexample

development2026-08-01

Claim

GPT-5.6 Sol showed the 150-year-old Maxwell conjecture is false, with humans publishing its counterexample of five point charges with 24 critical points beyond Maxwell's bound, while leading ArXivLean with 18 of 48 statements proved and Epoch expanded its open-problems benchmark to 50 with three already down.

Reported metric: 18 of 48 / 3 of 50

Reporting date: 2026-08-01 (not necessarily the event date)

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

Welcome to August 1, 2026 (theinnermostloop.substack.com)

Knowledge graphopen in browser →

Reported in

Welcome to August 1, 2026

Actor

Evidence for

Supersedes

Ten problems open for a decade fall, all ten proofs under $2,000

Referenced by

Cite or correct this record

Citation formatCitation text

A 150-year-old conjecture is shown false with a five-charge counterexample
Innermost Loop KB — secondary record
Reporting date: 2026-08-01
KB permalink: https://nicholsn.github.io/innermost-loop-kb/developments/2026-08-01-a-hundred-fifty-year-old-conjecture-shown-false
Claim: GPT-5.6 Sol showed the 150-year-old Maxwell conjecture is false, with humans publishing its counterexample of five point charges with 24 critical points beyond Maxwell's bound, while leading ArXivLean with 18 of 48 statements proved and Epoch expanded its open-problems benchmark to 50 with three already down.
Attributed sources:
- Welcome to August 1, 2026 — https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/welcome-to-august-1-2026
This citation does not imply independent verification of linked-source claims.

Suggest a correction — opens a GitHub draft for you to review and submit.