Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

Posted by Soulskill on from the optimus-prime-conjecture-still-unresolved dept.

ananyo writes "Researchers hoping to get '2' as the answer for a long-sought proof involving pairs of prime numbers are celebrating the fact that a mathematician has wrestled the value down from infinity to 70 million. That goal is the proof to a conjecture concerning prime numbers. Primes abound among smaller numbers, but they become less and less frequent as one goes towards larger numbers. But exceptions exist: the 'twin primes,' which are pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. The twin prime conjecture says that there is an infinite number of such twin pairs. Some attribute the conjecture to the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, which would make it one of the oldest open problems in mathematics. The new result, from Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, finds that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are less than 70 million units apart. He presented his research on 13 May to an audience of a few dozen at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although 70 million seems like a very large number, the existence of any finite bound, no matter how large, means that that the gaps between consecutive numbers don't keep growing forever."

11 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Re:'2' - wrong, its 42 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    everyone knows the answer is 42

    -1

  2. Not in North Carolina by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No siree. Ain't non prime numbers at all here in North Carolina since we done banned them. Ain't no angels felled out of the sky, ain't no computers breakin', and my cousin's kisses never tasted sweeter. Prime numbers are a godless socialist conspiracy against Jedus and mah wallet.

    1. Re:Not in North Carolina by Mitchell314 · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's also against our state law that twin primes cannot cohabitate unless they're the same sex.

      --
      I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
  3. Gaps between numbers... by rew · · Score: 5, Funny

    To be perfectly honest the proof that the gap between consecutive integers doesn't grow forever is pretty simple. It stays 1.

    1. Re:Gaps between numbers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Traditionally, when you're joking you should write something that's funny.

    2. Re:Gaps between numbers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      He may be English.

    3. Re:Gaps between numbers... by twisteddk · · Score: 2, Funny

      Given that the only "real use" for large primes is cryptography, I was in my nerd mindset thinking that this means that there will now be a near finite amount of processing power required to break algorithms.

      However, I keep comming back to xkcd aswell: http://xkcd.com/538/

      --
      --- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
  4. Re:'2' - wrong, its 42 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    That would make it 41?

  5. Re:TFS by Raenex · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is probably the worst written summary that I have ever read on Slashdot.

    You must be new here.

  6. Re:Stories like this... by jamesh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Stories like this only remind me of how ignorant I still am and how I've wasted my life.

    Don't feel bad. Maybe you've made coffee for, served fries to, or unclogged the toilet of one of these great people? Every little bit helps!

  7. Twin Primes by spaceman375 · · Score: 2, Funny
    My favorite example of twin primes is "867-5309/Jenny" performed by Tommy Tutone in 1982.

    Thanx xkcd!

    --
    On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth