erdos-unit-distance-comparator
Independent verification, via leanprover/comparator, that the ErdosUnitDistance library really proves:
The uniform-constant form of Erdős's unit-distance conjecture is false — for every
C > 0there are arbitrarily largenadmittingn-point planar sets with more thann^(1 + C / log log n)unit-distance pairs (L. Alpöge, 2026).
What to audit
Only Challenge.lean, which imports only Mathlib:
it defines the unit-distance count and states the theorem (with sorry).
If you believe Challenge.lean says what the theorem above says, then a
successful comparator run certifies that the library proves it using only
the axioms propext, Quot.sound, Classical.choice — without your
having to read or trust any of the proof code.
Solution.lean bridges the challenge statement to the library's theorem
by definitional equality; comparator rebuilds both modules in a sandbox,
exports them with lean4export, compares the statements, checks the
axioms, and replays the proof through the Lean kernel.
Run it
./verify.sh
(Linux; downloads comparator, lean4export and landrun pinned to this
project's toolchain, fetches the Mathlib cache, and runs the check.
Expected final output: Your solution is okay!)
The same script runs in CI on every push — see the badge/workflow under
.github/workflows/comparator.yml.
In the Palomar registry
Registered as
PALOMAR-2026-08-08-000001,
which runs the same comparison itself and publishes a rendered, hoverable
Challenge.lean beside the record, so the statement above can be read without
cloning anything.
A registered render is immutable: the bytes are what the record's hash is of. So an improvement to how Palomar draws one reaches a reader through a new version rather than by rewriting an old record, and a new version needs a commit that has not been registered.
Note for NixOS users
landrun needs the Nix store mounted read-only in its sandbox; wrap it as
landrun --rox /nix/store "$@" and put that wrapper first in PATH
before running ./verify.sh.