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Another Breakthrough in Prime Number Theory
Battal Boy writes "From aimath.org: Dan Goldston and his Turkish colleague Yalcin Cem Yildirim have smashed all previous records on the size of small gaps between prime numbers. This work is a major step toward the centuries-old problem of showing that there are infinitely many 'twin primes': prime numbers which differ by 2, such as 11 and 13, 17 and 19, 29 and 31,...I am especially proud of this achievement as Yalcin is a close friend of mine from way back! You may also want to check out the Mercury News Article and Dan Goldston's home page where you can see a photo of Dan's back being slowly but surely broken by two of his children ..." Finding patterns in primes seems to be all the rage.
I don't think this will help cracking RSA in anyway. I even believe this will even strengthen the RSA encryption. RSA is based upon the fact that it is very difficult (as in there is no trivial way) to factor a composit number into two primes. And these new theories won't help factorization. Ofcourse, if there is indeed a usufull pattern, it may help to find the primes---that are required for factorization---faster, but the person who uses the RSA-technique can do this too. This will allow the this person to find even bigger primes faster then usuall, so even if the cracker can find possible usufull primes faster, he has to try a whole lot more to facter the composite number. And since trying out a factor to see if the is part of the composite takes much longer time, I only see benefits for the RSA encryption scheme.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
You want boring? Then go and take a look at the PDF papers on this site.
Are they boring? Yes, exruciatingly and mind numbingly so...
Did they help us win the Second World War? err...yes
A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist...