ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Markus–Yamabe conjecture

The Markus-Yamabe conjecture is kind of like a really hard puzzle that smart people are trying to solve. It's all about shapes and how they bend and curve.

Imagine you have a piece of paper, and you draw a shape on it. You can then bend and twist the paper to change the shape. The Markus-Yamabe conjecture is all about how much you can bend and twist a shape without breaking it.

Specifically, the Markus-Yamabe conjecture says that if you have a certain type of shape, called a Riemannian manifold, then you can bend and twist it in lots of different ways without breaking it. This is kind of like saying that if you have a rubber ball, you can squeeze it and stretch it and twist it in lots of different ways, but it will still be a ball at the end.

Now, this might all seem kind of abstract and hard to understand, but it's really important for people who study geometry and physics. By trying to solve the Markus-Yamabe conjecture, they can learn more about how the universe works and what shapes things can have. So even if it's a hard puzzle, it's worth trying to solve!