Chapter 16
A few days after meeting Professor Park Mu-yeol.
Ding-dong.
Mom's phone got a text from Professor Park.
It was the OK signal from the contact information we had exchanged earlier.
[That's truly amazing, A-yeon. Although your mother helped, to think a five-year-old wrote a 120-page paper with this level of completion. Let's upload it right away and get it reviewed.]
“Hehe.”
As expected, if it were Professor Park, he'd answer like that!
I coordinated with Professor Park by text and decided to submit the paper to arXiv at the appointed time.
‘The paper file’s PDF and TEX versions are both ready...'
I filled out the required fields for uploading the paper one by one, carefully.
Author name: Yu A-yeon.
Affiliation: None.
Degree: None.
So empty~
It felt oddly empty because there was nothing to put in the input field except my name.
Normally, a paper with such shabby specs would have been quietly buried among tens of thousands of dummy entries.
Nobody would click it, nobody would read it, and nobody would remember it.
“But now I’ve brought in a solid backer!”
Click-.
I pressed the submit button.
And before even a few minutes had passed, a notification popped up.
[Endorser approval complete — Park Mu-yeol (KAIST Department of Mathematical Sciences)]
“Heheh.”
Just from the endorser approval going through, why was I so happy?
‘Professor Park Mu-yeol, thank you so much-!’
✒️✒️✒️
Professor Park was supporting Yu A-yeon far more enthusiastically than he had promised.
He posted Yu A-yeon's paper link in the Discord channel where number theorists gathered and promoted it.
—Please read it. Seriously.
In the academic community, Professor Park Mu-yeol's comments carried considerable weight.
A name well known in analytic number theory using the word “seriously” was nothing to dismiss lightly.
Princeton University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and more.
Professors researching number theory at prestigious institutions clicked the link with indifferent expressions.
[On the Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis]
[Authors: Yu A-yeon, Han Seol-ae]
‘Nothing much to gain this time either, huh.’
Every year, a dozen or so papers claiming to prove the Riemann Hypothesis are uploaded.
Ten out of ten are all patchwork jobs with flimsy logic.
A researcher could spot the logical holes right away after skimming just a few pages.
That was why the researchers clicked this paper without expecting much, either.
But then.
This paper was different.
Pages turned, and turned, and turned again.
“… This isn’t nonsense.”
There was no obvious logical leap to point out and fix.
Of course, to verify a theoretical paper of this length perfectly, even a team of experts would take months, if not years.
It wasn't something they could declare right or wrong on the spot.
But at the very least.
The first impression was different.
And that sense of anticipation spread quickly.
Even authoritative researchers began speaking up one by one.
- It's worth reading at least once.
- The approach is interesting.
- There’s at least some possibility.
The rumor spread like wildfire.
And the people most sensitive to that current were academic reporters chasing gossip.
The reporters quickly picked up on the issue and started churning out sensational headlines.
[Humanity’s greatest unsolved problem, the Riemann Hypothesis—is this the real thing? An unknown Korean researcher’s paper shakes academia!]
[KAIST Professor Park Mu-yeol gives his stamp of approval… Experts say, “We sensed there was something there.”]
As the articles poured in, the comments started getting their hopes up too.
- To think such an amazing achievement came out of Korea… I'm moved.
- They should find the researcher, support them with taxpayer money, and give them an award.
- It's all thanks to Korea's outstanding passion for education.
✒️✒️✒️
Major Math Gallery.
After seeing the articles, Yu A-yeon's paper became a hot topic in the gallery.
[Title: Season 1,842,502's Riemann Hypothesis proof has entered the gallery, lol]
Since the author was Korean, a flood of copy-paste articles suddenly started pouring out, lol.
How much money did they get paid?
- But maybe this time we don't know. The reaction on Reddit isn't bad, either.
- What do you mean, don't know? No institution, no degree—can’t you tell just from that? It's obviously a total scam, lol.
[Title: But Professor Park Mu-yeol is listed as the endorser?]
What is this?
And I'm in a Discord room for number theory researchers, and Professor Park Mu-yeol himself posted the link there and told us to read it.
For anyone who doesn't know who Professor Park Mu-yeol is, he's the KAIST professor of analytic number theory.
After Professor Shin I-jun died, you could say he's the top in this field in Korea.
Anyway, this guy said to read it seriously, so something feels off;;
- I was going to read it, but what is this, a 120-page paper? This is giving me a massive headache.
- Park Mu-yeol endorsed a paper with no institution and no degree? Something feels off.
[Title: Then who the hell is Yu A-yeon?]
No institution, no degree—just that alone is insanely jarring.
And since I'd never even heard the name before, I searched academic databases and only got people with the same name.
In other words, this is her first paper.
The second author, Han Seol-ae, is in the database.
She wrote a few papers under Shin I-jun.
But after graduating from her master's program, she had no activity for over five years and then suddenly dropped a paper.
That's also insanely mysterious.
- The Shin I-jun line?
- After declaring he would prove the Riemann Hypothesis and then dying, his student published a Riemann Hypothesis proof paper five years later... huh, what is this?
- ㄴ Didn't Shin I-jun have research notes he never made public? Maybe his student organized them and uploaded them?
- ㄴ For real, this seems like it.
- ㄴ If Park Mu-yeol even endorsed it, there's a chance.
- ㄴ But who on earth is Yu A-yeon?
[Title: Overseas reactions summarized (number theory Discord translation)]
I roughly translated the reactions from the Discord room.
‘The approach itself is the already widely discussed Hilbert-Pólya approach, but the operator construction is fresh. This part needs a proper look.’
‘The author says she's an independent researcher, but how she wrote a paper at this level without an institution is the bigger question.’
‘For now it's on arXiv, so it seems best to let peer review do its job and have it examined.’
To sum it up, they opened it without expecting much and are now taking it more seriously than expected.
- Isn't that person a Princeton professor?
- If even overseas is reacting like this, then it really might have some possibility.
- When Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, people were skeptical at first too, but it ended up being confirmed. Could this be like that?
- But Wiles was still at Princeton. This time it's completely unaffiliated.
[Title: Okay, now can we freak out?]
Hell yeah, lol.
Who are we?
The Riemann Hypothesis, one of the world's seven great mathematical problems, unsolved for 160 years.
The country that produced the mathematician who proved the Riemann Hypothesis.
Lol, let's go, math powerhouse—!!!
- We've suddenly become a math superpower. America is watching closely, and Europe is on edge.
- Now I'm going to Europe and strutting around with my shoulders back, lol. Anyone who shoulder-checks me is dead.
- ㄴ What the hell are you?
- ㄴ Damn, don't say you're Korean, say you're Chinese.
✒️✒️✒️
Ever since I submitted the paper to arXiv, Mom had been looking at her phone whenever she had a spare moment.
“A-yeon, the articles are piling up like crazy.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you want to check?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
Shake-shake-.
“Everything coming out now is just hype articles. The paper hasn't even been verified, let alone peer reviewed, and it's already getting attention. None of that matters at all.”
I do want praise.
But I wanted proper praise.
Only after it's confirmed that the Riemann Hypothesis proof is correct, and after the academic world officially recognizes it, do I want that applause.
I don't want to be showered with attention when nothing is certain yet.
And also.
‘I already learned once that obsessing over online opinion doesn't do any good.’
The incident from last time, when I was messing around in the gallery and made Arin cry, still weighed on my mind.
‘Right now, spending time with Arin is more important.’
“Arin, let's play, big sis!”
“Yay—!”
“What do you want to play?”
“Drawing!”
Arin pulled out the 48-color crayons she'd gotten as a birthday present last time.
‘48-color crayons...! So cool...!’
Not 12 colors, not 24 colors, but crayons with a whopping 48 different colors to choose from!
The spectrum of visible light that the human eye can perceive.
About 380 nanometers (violet) to 750 nanometers (red).
Split that spectrum into 48 equal parts, pack each shard of light into a stick, and then.
A total cheat item that can output that light whenever the user wants!
To me, this is a magic wand!
“Arin, can big sis use these crayons too?”
“Yep!”
“Thanks!”
As expected of my little sister. She was so willing to lend this cheat item to her big sis.
Flutter~
We spread out a huge sheet of drawing paper on the living room floor.
‘I should draw the friends I met in Dreamland last time!’
A pink dolphin.
A sky-blue cat.
A sheep flying through the sky.
A blonde girl in a black dress.
We drew freely.
Bzz-bzz-bzz-.
My feet kept tapping as I drew.
“Big sis, you drew it well!”
“Right?”
“Who is this kid?”
“We became friends in Dreamland, and there were 50,000 of them swarming around together. They were cheerful friends.”
“Oh! I want to be friends with them later too!”
After drawing, we decided to play board games.
A recently bought animal card battle game.
Each person got cards, played them according to the conditions, and tried to empty their hand first.
“You play this like this, and this like this... do you kinda get it?”
“Yep!”
I explained the rules to Arin and started the game.
‘Sorry, Arin, but even if my opponent is only three years old, I'm giving it my all.’
This is the resolve of a five-year-old!
“Big sis, I'm going to win.”
“Heh. That won't be easy~?”
I won the first round easily.
“Again!”
I won the second round just as easily.
“Again!”
I won the third round easily, too.
“Hehe.”
“Waaah-!”
I was worried she'd burst into tears from how frustrated she was, but Arin didn't cry.
Instead, Arin quietly stared at the cards laid out in front of her.
Then she flipped the cards one by one and began recreating the previous game state.
“Like this, and like this I lost, and if I do it like this I win...”
Arin wasn't clearing away the board because she'd lost; she was reviewing why she lost.
‘A three-year-old is reviewing the game?’
“Arin, why did you do that just now?”
“Hmm... dunno. Just because?”
“Really?”
30 minutes later.
In the end, Arin couldn't beat me even once.
But the performance she showed during the game was not that of an ordinary three-year-old.
“Arin, did you have fun?”
“Yep! But... next time, I wanna win!”
“Okay, I'll be looking forward to it.”
After playtime ended.
While Arin went to the bathroom by herself to brush her teeth.
I said to Mom.
“Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“I think it might be good for Arin to get one too.”
“Get what?”
“An IQ test.”