{"id":237014,"date":"2026-05-13T02:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/how-unknowable-math-can-help-hide-secrets"},"modified":"2026-05-13T02:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:04:13","slug":"how-unknowable-math-can-help-hide-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/how-unknowable-math-can-help-hide-secrets","title":{"rendered":"How Unknowable Math Can Help Hide Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Perhaps the most famous example comes from a theorem by the logician Kurt G\u00f6del\u2019s celebrated result \u2014 one of two \u201cincompleteness theorems<\/a>\u201d he published in 1931 \u2014 established that for any reasonable set of basic mathematical assumptions, called axioms, it\u2019s impossible to prove that the axioms won\u2019t eventually lead to contradictions. Though mathematicians continued their research much as they had before, they would never again be certain that their rules were self-consistent.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years after G\u00f6del\u2019s theorem, cryptographers devised a radical new proof method in which unknowability played a very different role. Proofs based on this technique, called zero-knowledge proofs<\/a>, can convince even the most skeptical audience that a statement is true without revealing why it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

These two flavors of unknowability, which originated decades apart and in different fields, were long considered completely unrelated. Now the computer scientist Rahul Ilango (opens a new tab)<\/a> has established a striking connection (opens a new tab)<\/a> between them. While still a graduate student, he devised a new type of zero-knowledge proof in which secrecy stems from the fundamental limits of math. Ilango\u2019s approach gets around limitations of zero-knowledge proofs that researchers have long thought insurmountable, pushing the boundaries of what such a proof can be. The work has also spurred researchers to explore other intriguing links between mathematical logic and cryptography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the most famous example comes from a theorem by the logician Kurt G\u00f6del\u2019s celebrated result \u2014 one of two \u201cincompleteness theorems\u201d he published in 1931 \u2014 established that for any reasonable set of basic mathematical assumptions, called axioms, it\u2019s impossible to prove that the axioms won\u2019t eventually lead to contradictions. Though mathematicians continued their [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1625,2229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-encryption","category-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}