Prime number twins

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KBleivik
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Prime number twins

Post by KBleivik »

I aksed my friend Google Gemini the following

prompt:

How many prime number twins are there

Answer:
This is a fascinating question that gets to the heart of some unsolved mysteries in mathematics!

**The short answer:** We don't know for sure how many twin primes there are.

**The longer answer:**

* **What are twin primes?** They are pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2. For example, (3, 5), (11, 13), and (17, 19) are twin primes.

* **The Twin Prime Conjecture:** Mathematicians believe there are infinitely many twin primes, but no one has been able to prove this definitively. This is a famous unsolved problem in number theory.

* **What we do know:**
* We've discovered a lot of twin primes, and they seem to keep appearing as we explore larger numbers.
* There's strong evidence to support the conjecture, but evidence isn't the same as proof.

**Why is this so hard to prove?**

Prime numbers are notoriously unpredictable. There's no simple formula to generate them, and their distribution gets more and more irregular as numbers get bigger. This makes it incredibly difficult to make definitive statements about them, especially when it comes to patterns like twin primes.

**In summary:** While we can find many twin primes, we don't know if there's a finite or infinite number of them. The question of their infinitude remains one of the most intriguing open problems in mathematics.
Then I used natural language input to https://www.wolframalpha.com/

compute the number of primen number twins


Answer:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=co ... mber+twins

Next prompt to Gemini:

do you agree that all prime number twins have the format

nx6-1, nx6+1 for n>=1


Answer:
Yes, I agree that all prime number twins (except for the pair 3 and 5) can be expressed in the form 6n - 1 and 6n + 1, where n is an integer greater than or equal to 1.

Here's why:

* **Consider all integers:** Any integer can be expressed in one of the following forms: 6n, 6n + 1, 6n + 2, 6n + 3, 6n + 4, or 6n + 5, where n is an integer.

* **Eliminate non-prime possibilities:**
* 6n: Divisible by 6 (and therefore by 2 and 3) unless n=0, in which case 6n=0, which is not prime.
* 6n + 2: Divisible by 2.
* 6n + 3: Divisible by 3.
* 6n + 4: Divisible by 2.

* **Remaining possibilities:** This leaves us with 6n + 1 and 6n + 5. 6n+5 can also be written as 6(n+1)-1.

* **Twin Prime Condition:** Twin primes are two primes that differ by 2. If one prime is of the form 6n - 1, a number 2 greater than it would be 6n + 1. If one prime is of the form 6n+1, a number 2 less than it would be 6n-1.

* **Exception of 3 and 5:** The twin prime pair (3, 5) is an exception. 3 cannot be expressed in the form 6n - 1 for n>=1. However, all other twin primes fit this pattern.

Therefore, while the 6n ± 1 format is a *necessary* condition for twin primes (excluding 3 and 5), it's not *sufficient*. Just because a number is of the form 6n ± 1 doesn't guarantee it's prime. It just means it's *possible* it could be prime, and if it has a "twin" (differing by 2) it is a candidate twin prime.
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