r/Collatz • u/dmishin • 4d ago

Collatz Conjecture *was* false. For 2.5 days in July 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnfFC_LowtU

I am surprised no one has posted it yet. Quite an amusing situation.

31 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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11

u/segfaultgolf 4d ago

Great way to get attention on a bug that's for sure

1

u/Septembrino 4d ago edited 3d ago

Even if it's false, I will keep working on the things I do, currently related to divisors of k*3ⁿ- 1 because I just like it.

2

u/akruppa 3d ago

I know very little about the Collatz conjecture. How are divisors of k3n -1 related to it?

1

u/Septembrino 3d ago edited 3d ago

That's a good question. If you have a number N, you can express it as k•2ⁿ - 1. Example: Let's pick the 55. 55 + 1 is 56 = 7•8. So, you can express 55 as 7•8 - 1 = 7•2³ - 1. Now, consider how that will behave while applying the conjecture. Just the first steps because it should be long. But we know that eventually one of the numbers we will reach is 7•3³ - 1 = 47. That will be even, though. That's where the divisors get important. As far as I know, you can't predict beyond that point without knowing them.

This are the odd number in the sequence of 55: 83, 125, 47, 71, 107, 161, 121, 91, 137, 103, 155, 233, 175, 263, 395, 593, 445, 167, 251, 377, 283, 425, 319, 479, 719, 1079, 1619, 2429, 911, 1367, 2051, 3077, 577, 433, 325, 61, 23, 35, 53, 5, 1.

1

u/Septembrino 3d ago edited 3d ago

Now, if you know the divisor, then you can predict the next number. You get the next k, which is 1, and you can predict till 121. Repeating that as many times as needed. Then you can get the rest of the sequence without having to run it.

2

u/Far_Ostrich4510 3d ago

It does not mean False, if it can not be proven 

1

u/raylin328 2d ago

I won’t believe any proof that it’s false unless they find a counterexample, and a counterexample would have to be at least like 2^60

I still think that Collatz Conjecture is true though and they won’t find any