; This machine halts if and only if Erdős' conjecture on powers of two is false: ; ; "For all n > 8, there is at least one 2 in the ternary representation of 2^n" ; ; P. Erdős. Some unconventional problems in number theory. Mathematics Magazine, 52(2):67–70, 1979. ; ; The machine has 5 states and 4 symbols ; States mul2_F and mul2_G run the FST that computes 2x in base 3 (reverse-ternary). ; The other states are responsible for checking the conjecture and keeping track of the 3 known special cases: ; 1, 4 and 256 which are resepectively 1, 11 and 100111 in base 3. ; ; This machine was proven correct: initial_state: mul2_G redundancy: 1 mul2_F 0 0 R mul2_F 1 2 R mul2_F 2 1 R mul2_G # # L find_2 mul2_G 0 1 R mul2_F 1 0 R mul2_G 2 2 R mul2_G # 1 R mul2_F find_2 0 0 L find_2 1 1 L find_2 2 2 L rewind ; we found a 2 # # L check_halt ; no 2 has been found rewind 0 0 L rewind 1 1 L rewind 2 2 L rewind # # R mul2_F ; we do the next power of 2 check_halt ; There are 3 known counter examples: ; base 3: 1, 11, 100111 ; base 10: 1, 4, 256 0 1 R rewind 1 2 R rewind 2 HALT ; We have found a new counter example # 0 R rewind