Tsinghua researchers break 41-year record, prove Dijkstra is not optimal

jedisct1 · x · 2026-09-01

A Tsinghua University team published a paper breaking the "sorting barrier" held since 1984: textbooks taught that shortest-path search requires sorting nodes by distance, which has a mathematical floor. By combining Bellman-Ford logic with a novel "recursive partial ordering" method, they solve the problem without fully sorting nodes, proving Dijkstra—used everywhere from Google Maps to internet routing—is not optimal.

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