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.

Comments

WHAT?

[jpellino]

I surfed away from Mothers Against Boomerangs for this?

Seriously, I didn't care about primes when I had to, I really can't see a compelling reason to look for really big numbers that don't factor except for sheer curiosity. To me this is like trainspotting for dollars.

Wake me when there's an application.

Don't wake me for troll modding. I know it's coming.

And erm, proving that there's an infinite number of them? How will you know when you're done?

And hunting for primes? I'm calling People for the Ethical Treatment of Numbers.

Re:Appreciate the beauty of mathematics, for petes

[Stalyn]

philosophers think they are god and then they claim "I don't exist".