h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

doing some study into patterns of primes, what do i search for to find the gap between primes? eg:

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23
is
1 2 2 2 2 4 2 4

so its when you take a prime and minus the prime before it, what would i search for to find all of these? i cannot be bothered working out by hand, i just need the name of this or something. thank you

this might help..

http://primes.utm.edu/glossary/page.php?sort=Log

Don't get optimistic. No-one's found any patterns yet.

B

And hope that they don't. Secure internet sites depend on the random distribution of prime numbers for their security. If there turns out to be a pattern, amazon, ebay, everybody who trades online is stuffed, overnight.

H.

Incentive to try

I don't know that much about maths, but I think the no1 problem is exactly what you're after, and it's called the Riemann Hypothesis. I think the hypothesis is that there IS a way to work out the gaps between the primes.
If you do work it out, can I have 10% of the several million$ you win please.

Just for putting you on the right track

how much exactly is it worth?

my belief...theres enough knowledge about primes in the world to solve it...but not everyone will let there information be shared, if everyone was together in one room, and they all put forth the information they knew, and togethey they all tried.....they might find it.

Well the sites should upgrade to quantum incription, that seems impossible to hack.

The Reimann Hypothesis is just another way of saying that the primes are randomly distributed. This has been tested by computer to zillions of primes (up to prime numbers of more than a hundred digits) and so far has not been disproven.

F

Quantum encryption is indeed impossible to hack. The only problem is that we've got no way of making it yet.

B

surely it just means you have to write the message down in really, really, really small letters?

Yes... really small letters that will change if you look at them... or even if you don't.... and you can't be too sure where you wrote them down... or when...

Definitely uncrackable.

Sadly, it's not quite that simple.

It's all about polarising individual photons of light and hoping they stay like that.

B

No problem is so big (or so small) that it can't be over simplified.


CZ

so does anyone know how much money an answer is worth?

There's a $1 million prize for the first person to either prove or disprove the Riemann Hypothesis. Demonstrating that primes are not randomly distributed should be sufficient.

F

so is being a prime number a function of the base of a number (I assume not, I assume a prime is a prime in any base?) or an inherent property of the specific number?
Or is that what you are trying to find out?

weeeee i have spent 3 days of constant thinking, and i really believe ive found a pattern. and i had karma on my side, something extremely bad happened to me that i didnt deserve.....and then i discovered the best thing yet. and the funny thing is, i wouldnt of found it if the really bad thing hadnt of happened.

i just need to do a lot more investigation into this and see if theres any problems that i can fix up. wish me luck.

Umm good luck mate!

Now about this pattern...It's great that you've "found" one and that you've been thinking about the problem but, sorry to say, finding a pattern will not solve the riemann hypothesis. Plenty of people (mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike) have found a pattern in the prime numbers. But the real problem is proving that this pattern ALWAYS works. Like someone already said on this thread, they've checked prime numbers up to 200 digits long and a pattern that always works hasn't been found yet.

Basically, there's an infinite number of primes, so there is an infinite number of "differences" between two consecutive primes. To disprove the riemann hypothesis you don't just have to find a pattern that works for heaps and heaps of the infinitely many prime numbers, you have to PROVE that it works for every single prime number, and every possible prime number (because there's no highest prime). That would show that the primes aren't randomly distributed.

So, heaps and heaps of luck to you

Ami of zx

Good luck, you could earn millions on blackmailing encryption companies