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Wait, "once in a century"? How many times has this been proven such that they feel comfortable talking about the statistical rate of proofs?

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I can tell a HN article is from Quanta from the obnoxious clickbaity title. I'm shocked that they have to do this given their target audience (because I'd rather not believe they just choose to)

Each area has its own “most important” conjecture(s), so Quanta is in no danger of running out of proofs to write about that somebody legitimately thinks are super important.

(Alas, while “most important” conjectures are a renewable resource, lay reader tolerance for such headlines may not be.)

The study of Kakeya sets is over 100 years old — so if you think this generalized conjecture is the most important one in their subfield, you can see why somebody would describe it this way.

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