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Largest Twin Prime Yet Discovered

Posted by kdawson on from the Hardy-Littlewood-conjecture dept.

Chris Chiasson writes "The Twin Internet Prime Search and PrimeGrid have recently discovered the largest known twin prime. A twin prime is a pair of prime numbers separated by the integer two. The pair discovered on January 15th was 2003663613 * 2195,000 ± 1. The two primes are 58,711 digits long. The discoverer was Eric Vautier, from France."

19 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Are you kidding? by greg_barton · · Score: 5, Funny
    A twin prime is a pair of prime numbers separated by the integer two.

    Are you kidding? Those are easy to find! Try getting two primes separated by the integer three...
    1. Re:Are you kidding? by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean like this?

      137

      The primes are 1 and 7, separated by the integer 3...

    2. Re:Are you kidding? by proverbialcow · · Score: 4, Funny

      Very good. Now try finding two primes whose difference is 7.

      And when you're done with that, find two perfect cubes whose difference is also a perfect cube. I did this once, but there wasn't enough room in the margin to write the answer.

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    3. Re:Are you kidding? by Record+Keeper · · Score: 5, Funny
      (for the record I don't treat 1 as a prime number)

      Noted.

  2. Re:Don't seem too excited by odasnac · · Score: 5, Funny

    generally, yeah. most prime numbers are odd.


    ...

    i'm so sorry.

  3. Re:How is this meaningful? by hamburger+lady · · Score: 2, Funny

    these numbers can totally come in useful in finding a cure for cancer.

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  4. Re:I am a math major... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    I am a math major (although I don't study prime numbers). This is totally, utterly useless, in a practical sense. Well, it might be useful in the field of CS, although I don't know enough about these project to know if any novel algorithms were used. It is sort of interesting though, because the twin prime conjecture (i.e. the statement that there are an infinite number of such pairs) is still unproven, so it's kind of cool to be able to say "Look, we found another pair!"

    One down, infinity more to go. Proof by enumeration, here we come...

  5. Re:Don't seem too excited by cperciva · · Score: 2, Funny

    most prime numbers are odd.

    Only on slashdot would the parent get moderated as "informative"...

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  6. Re:I am a math major... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Funny
    This is totally, utterly useless, in a practical sense.

    Are you kidding me?!? I'm going to use that as my new encryption key! It will be like UBER-secure and take ten hundred billion, billion YEARS to guess!

    [...]

    Um... I wasn't supposed to tell you that, was I?
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  7. Good for security. by r00t · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now we all know the best numbers to use for a PGP key.

  8. Re:Fun stuff by DirePickle · · Score: 2, Funny
    I find it interesting that the guy who works with insanely cool things like primes gave mind-numblingly boring lectures.
    Only on Slashdot.
  9. MOD PARENT +37 KICKASS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Mod parent +37 kickass.

  10. Re:Don't seem too excited by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 5, Funny
    most prime numbers are odd.
    Only on slashdot would the parent get moderated as "informative"...
    Do you know why 2 is odd?

    It's the only even prime number. :)
  11. Re:How is this meaningful? by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Funny

    scoff all you want. You wouldn't believe the kinds of math that have been applied to gnome sequencing.. stuff that was discovered in completely different domains. That's the beauty of math.

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  12. Re:How is this meaningful? by heinousjay · · Score: 3, Funny

    I usually just line the gnomes up by height.

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  13. Why call them twin primes... by sehlat · · Score: 5, Funny

    and not prime mates?

  14. To quote Fark by symbolset · · Score: 2, Funny

    This article is worthless without pictures.

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  15. But... aren't all odd numbers prime ? by dargaud · · Score: 5, Funny

    Time for an old classic: How to prove that all odd numbers are prime?
    Well, this problem has different solutions whether you are a: Mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, and by induction we have that all the odd integers are prime. Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error... Engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime... Chemist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime... hey, let's publish! Modern physicist using renormalization: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... 9/3 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is ... 15/3 is prime, 17 is prime, 19 is prime, 21 is ... 21/3 is prime... Quantum Physicist: All numbers are equally prime and non-prime until observed. Professor: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, and the rest are left as an exercise for the student. Confused Undergraduate: Let p be any prime number larger than 2. Then p is not divisible by 2, so p is odd. QED Measure nontheorist: There are exactly as many odd numbers as primes (Euclid, Cantor), and exactly one even prime (namely 2), so there must be exactly one odd nonprime (namely 1). Cosmologist: 3 is prime, yes it is true.... Computer Scientist: 10 is prime, 11 is prime, 101 is prime... Programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 will be fixed in the next release, ... C programmer: 03 is prime, 05 is prime, 07 is prime, 09 is really 011 which everyone knows is prime, ... BASIC programmer: What's a prime? COBOL programmer: What's an odd number? Windows programmer: 3 is prime. Wait... Mac programmer: Now why would anyone want to know about that? That's not user friendly. You don't worry about it, we'll take care of it for you. Bill Gates: 1. No one will ever need any more than 3. ZX-81 Computer Programmer: 3 is prime, Out of Memory. Pentium owner: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 8.9999978 is prime... GNU programmer: % prime
    usage: prime [-nV] [--quiet] [--silent] [--version] [-e script] --catenate --concatenate | c --create | d --diff --compare | r --append | t --list | u --update | x -extract --get [ --atime-preserve ] [ -b, --block-size N ] [ -B, --read-full-blocks ] [ -C, --directory DIR ] [--checkpoint ] [ -f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F ] [ --force-local ] [ -F, --info-script F --new-volume-script F ] [-G, --incremental ] [ -g, --listed-incremental F ] [ -h, --dereference ] [ -i, --ignore-zeros ] [ --ignore-failed-read ] [ -k, --keep-old-files ] [ -K, --starting-file F ] [ -l, --one-file-system ] [ -L, --tape-length N ] [ -m, --modification-time ] [ -M, --multi-volume ] [ -N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE ] [ -o, --old-archive, --portability ] [ -O, --to-stdout ] [ -p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions ] [ -P, --absolute-paths ] [ --preserve ] [ -R, --record-number ] [ [-f script-file] [--expression=script] [--file=script-file] [file...]
    prime: you must specify exactly one of the r, c, t, x, or d options
    For more information, type "prime --help'' Unix programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, ...
    Segmentation fault, Core dumped. Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is ...
    Oops, let's try that again:
    3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... 3 is ...
    Um, right. Okay, how about this:
    3 is not prime, 5 is not prime, 7 is not prime, 9 is not prim

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  16. Re:Good example of a /. story. by MagicM · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wouldn't that make it a bad example of a /. story?

    *rimshot*