• “Say you’ve lost an e-mail and you want to get it back — it would be guaranteed”
• “Let’s say you are lost in a town you have never been in before and you have to get to a friend’s house and there are no street signs — the directions will work no matter what.”

These are some of the applications the solution to the road coloring problem could bring us.For 38 years, mathematicians were trying to solve a problem called the road coloring problem. Hundreds of mathematicians failed until now.

A 63 years old man called Avraham Trahtman has finally solved it and found the road coloring problem solution.

Mathematicians assumed that it was possible to create a “universal map”. These map could direct people to arrive at exactly the same time at the same destination point, no matter of their starting position. But they just couldn’t find out how. Trathman wrote the solution in only 8 pages. From his own words, it was not that difficult.

From the experts point of view and from Trahtman’s boss, Stuart Margolis, this finding could have huge real life applications:

“Say you’ve lost an e-mail and you want to get it back — it would be guaranteed,” he said. “Let’s say you are lost in a town you have never been in before and you have to get to a friend’s house and there are no street signs — the directions will work no matter what.”

More info: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080320/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_math_riddle