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reikonomushatoday at 5:32 AM2 repliesview on HN

"The quintic has no closed form solution" is a theorem that is more precisely stated (in the usual capstone Galois proof) as follows: The quintic has no closed form solution in terms of arbitrary compositions of rational numbers, arithmetic, and Nth roots. We can absolutely express closed form solutions to the quintic if we broaden our repertoire of functions, such as with the Bring radical.

The post's argument is different than the usual Galois theory result about the unsolvability of the quintic, in that it shows a property that must be true about all EML(x,y)-derived functions, and a hypothetical quintic-solver-function does not have that property, so no function we add to our repertoire via EML will solve it (or any other function, elementary or not, that lacks this property).


Replies

lotaezenwatoday at 6:22 AM

Cool explanation, thanks!

cyberaxtoday at 6:54 AM

Bring radicals are just cheating.

You can't solve an equation? Why not just introduce a function that is equal to the solution of the equation! Problem solved.

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