ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Ravenel conjectures

The Ravenel conjectures are like a big puzzle that mathematicians are trying to solve. Imagine you have a big puzzle with many pieces, and you want to put them all together to make a picture.

When mathematicians study something called algebraic topology, they like to make different puzzles out of the same pieces. But sometimes they don't know if all the puzzles can be solved or not. These puzzles are called conjectures.

The Ravenel conjectures are a bunch of these puzzles that mathematicians are trying to solve. They are called "conjectures" because nobody has proven that they can be solved yet.

The reason why these puzzles are so tricky is because they involve lots of complicated math concepts that most people don't know about. But the mathematicians who work on the Ravenel conjectures are really smart and spend a lot of time trying to figure them out.

One day, one of these mathematicians might be able to solve all the puzzles and prove the Ravenel conjectures. But until then, it will still be a challenging and exciting job for math experts to work on.
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