Lance Fortnow on the current status and future outlook of solving the P-NP problem.

When computer scientists hang out at cocktail parties, they're apt to chat, among other things, about the single most important unsolved problem in computer science: the question, Does P = NP?

A new proof, published to the Web less than one week ago, purports to finally demonstrate that, in complexity theory, P != NP. As fast as the proof went up though, people found some potential issues ...

The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or mathematician to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the ...

"The P-NP problem is the most important open problem in computer science, if not all of mathematics. Simply stated, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly checked by computer can ...