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Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

scientificamerican.com

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#11
post #3

This sort of thing makes me feel there is some deep understanding of reality only inches away from us, we glimpse it through these patterns but the secret remains hidden.

and it will be something so trivial and obvious, those who were looking for it will be kicking themselves for missing it

honestly this would be it, wouldn't it? https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07fRJGiC51VEHPqYRfNaFjnEA

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#12
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and it will be something so trivial and obvious, those who were looking for it will be kicking themselves for missing it

It’s a huge refrain that shows up again every 20 years or so. Wolfram wrote a huge book with this premise, but I don’t think it’s gone anywhere even though it’s surely 25 years old by now.

GEB was similar in a cycle prior. It's cool to dream but the limits of accepted knowledge requires the hard work of assembling data, evidence, and reasoning.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#13
post #5

This sort of thing makes me feel there is some deep understanding of reality only inches away from us, we glimpse it through these patterns but the secret remains hidden.

Wouldn't it be fun if someone out there already knows a simple way to determine if a number is prime without factoring, but to them it is so obvious that they didn't even consider others may be interested.

As far as I know, the Lucas-Lehrer test used by GIMPS does not actually factor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primali...

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and it will be something so trivial and obvious, those who were looking for it will be kicking themselves for missing it

honestly this would be it, wouldn't it? https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07fRJGiC51VEHPqYRfNaFjnEA

Did you tried to share a hollywood action movie with us to tell us what exactly?

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly this would be it, wouldn't it? https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07fRJGiC51VEHPqYRfNaFjnEA

Did you tried to share a hollywood action movie with us to tell us what exactly?

Did you listen? The audio is different yet it still works.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#16
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be fun if someone out there already knows a simple way to determine if a number is prime without factoring, but to them it is so obvious that they didn't even consider others may be interested.

As far as I know, the Lucas-Lehrer test used by GIMPS does not actually factor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primali...

That works for very few numbers. From that Wikipedia article: “In mathematics, the Lucas–Lehmer test (LLT) is a primality test for Mersenne numbers”

That’s fine for GIMPS, which only searches for Mersenne primes, but doesn’t work in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test#Fast_determinis... mentions several tests that do not require factorization, though.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#17

This sort of thing makes me feel there is some deep understanding of reality only inches away from us, we glimpse it through these patterns but the secret remains hidden.

I had a similar feeling. But I think this is indeed a glimpse to the intrinsic structure of reality itself, not just a promise of seeing reality. Like we can have a blink of turning around in Plato's cave. I think the patterns of the Mandelbrot set is a similar thing. And there are only a handful of other things that shows the very basic structure of reality. And the encouraging thing is that it seems the core of reality is not an infinite void.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you tried to share a hollywood action movie with us to tell us what exactly?

Did you listen? The audio is different yet it still works.

No, I did not download a big movie and likely won't to get a point on HN.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#20
post #5

This sort of thing makes me feel there is some deep understanding of reality only inches away from us, we glimpse it through these patterns but the secret remains hidden.

Wouldn't it be fun if someone out there already knows a simple way to determine if a number is prime without factoring, but to them it is so obvious that they didn't even consider others may be interested.

Pseudoprime test usually works, and AKS algorithm always works, both are much faster than factoring.
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