"Supercomputers crack unsolvable number puzzle after 32-year quest"
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Livescience.com
Mathematicians have used supercomputers to calculate the value of the "ninth Dedekind number" or D(9), a complex number that was previously thought to be impossible to calculate. The number represents the number of possible configurations of a certain kind of true-false logical operation in different spatial dimensions. Two separate research groups produced the exact same number for D(9), confirming its accuracy. Dedekind numbers get exponentially larger for each new dimension, making them increasingly difficult to calculate. The newly identified value for D(9) is 286386577668298411128469151667598498812366.