slug: oeis-a038867-cube-gap-five-no-square bibkey: oeis2026a038867 doi: null url: https://oeis.org/A038867 triage: theorem motivation_gids:

• D5/S3/Factorization/CubeGapFiveNoSquare

The A038867 no-square conjecture

Problem

Take the difference between two cubes whose bases are five apart. Klaus Purath conjectured on May 15, 2026 that no such difference is a perfect square, noting verification through one hundred thousand indices.

Motivation

This is a first-tier recent OEIS conjecture. Direct inspection on September 9, 2026 found the statement still labelled Conjecture, with the page carrying only the polynomial expansion and the numerical verification.

Gap

The searched public indexes returned no proof. The polynomial expansion already on the page names the terms but says nothing about squares; the residue argument that settles it is not stated there or in the sole cross-referenced entry.

Route

The difference expands to five times a quadratic whose constant term is twenty-five and whose other terms carry a factor of three. So the whole expression is two modulo three, for every index. A square is zero or one modulo three, never two, so the two residue sets are disjoint and no term can be a square.

Subtraction of naturals truncates, so the module states the expanded form as the definition and recovers the difference of cubes separately, where the identity shows the subtraction is not truncating.

Falsifier

An index whose cube difference at gap five is a perfect square would contradict the theorem about the defined quantity.

Evidence

• Module: D5/S3/Factorization/CubeGapFiveNoSquare.lean.
• Main theorems: cube_gap_five_ne_sq and cube_gap_five_ne_sq_sub, the second in the source’s own subtraction form.
• Supporting results: gap_eq_cube_sub, gap_mod_three, sq_mod_three_ne_two.
• All four public results depend only on propositional extensionality and quotient soundness; no choice principle is used.
• There is no finite cutoff in any public statement.

The caller verified before implementing. The polynomial identity held for every index below two hundred with no mismatch. The residues of the difference formed the single-element set containing two, over five hundred indices. The residues of squares formed the set containing zero and one, over five hundred candidates. The two sets are disjoint. A direct search over three hundred thousand indices found no square.

Triage

theorem. The statement is proved for every index. Nothing is asserted about cube differences at other gaps, where the residue argument does not apply.

ASSUMED-UNVERIFIED

First-publication priority is not established. The searches do not exclude private or unindexed proofs. The identification with the OEIS entry is documentary; the kernel verifies the explicitly defined quantity.