Negative values of Riemann zeta function on the critical line.

A numerical counterexample to the first conjecture is $$ t = 282.4547208234621746108397940690599354\ldots $$ where both gp and Wolfram Alpha agree that $\zeta(\frac12 + it)$ has negative real part $\simeq -0.02763$ and negligible imaginary part, so the actual zero of ${\rm Im}(\zeta(\frac12+it))$ near $t=295.5839\ldots$ yields a negative value of $\zeta(\frac12+it)$.

This was found by approximating $\zeta'(\frac12+it)$ at each of the first "few" zeros of $\zeta$ tabulated by Odlyzko in http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/zeta_tables/zeros1 and looking near the first zero (the 127th overall) at which $\zeta'$ has negative imaginary part. There are $22$ such zeros of the $649$ zeros whose imaginary part lies in $[0,1000]$; there's probably a counterexample near each of those, e.g. looking around the second such zero (#136) yields $$ t = 295.583906974228176092587915204356841\ldots $$ with $\zeta(\frac12+it) \simeq -0.0169004$.

EDIT 1) Henry Cohn (in a comment below) provides gp code that looks for solutions in an interval by dividing it into segments $(t_0, t_0 + 0.01)$, testing whether ${\rm Im}(\zeta(\frac12+it))$ changes sign between the endpoints, and if so whether the real part is negative at the crossing. Extending his computation to $0 \leq t \leq 1000$ finds the expected $22$ solutions; in particular $282.45472+$ seems to be the first.

2) Once one has calculated an answer one can ask Google for its previous appearances. Google recognizes $282.45472$ from J.Arias-de-Reyna's paper "X-Ray of Riemann zeta function" (http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0309433) where it appears (to within $10^{-5}$) as the first counterexample to "Gram's law" — see the plot on page 26 (thick and thin curves show where $\zeta(s)$ is real and imaginary respectively).


The reason (1) 'appears' to be true for small $t$ is related to Gram's Law for the zeros of $\zeta(s)$. Edwards' book Riemann's Zeta Function (Dover) has a good explanation starting on p.125. The short version is that the Euler Maclaurin formula for $\zeta(1/2+i t)$ starts with a $+1$, and,

"as long as it is not necessary to use too large a value of $N$, it will be unusual for the smaller terms which follow to combine to overwhelm this advantage on the plus side. As Gram puts it, equilibrium between plus and minus values of Re$\zeta$ will be achieved only very slowly as $t$ increases."


Update, some recent information on (1):

Kalpokas, Korolev, Steuding recently released a preprint showing that $\zeta(1/2 + it)$ takes aribtrarily large positive and negative (real) values; and also show analog statements for the other lines through the origin, that is positive and negative (real) values of arbitary says of $e^{-i \phi} \zeta(1/2 + it)$ for any $\phi$. The paper contains also more quantitative results along these lines (cf. in particular Corollary 3 and the preceeding discussion).


Since (1) already received several answers, I expand and upgrade the comments on (2):

Yes, indeed it is conjectured, but unproved, that $\zeta(1/2 + i t)$ for $t \in \mathbb{R}$ is dense in the complex plane. [Side note: It is well-known that this is so for the lines $\sigma +it$ with $1/2 < \sigma < 1$.]

It seems that this conjecture was first formulated by Ramachandra (Durham, 1979), however only appeared in print in the second edition of Titchmarsh's book (note's by Heath-Brown), see the articles below for details.

There is very recent work on this problem due to Delbaen, Kowalski, and Nikeghbali. See in particular this preprint by the latter two and this by all three. Among others: in the former, they show how this result would follow "from a suitable version of the Keating--Snaith moment conjectures"; in the latter, they propose a refinement of the density conjecture, a quantitative version (see Conj. 1, in Sec. 3.9).