Goldbach's Conjecture Contest

Sam Place writes "Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes. The proof of this simple theory is worth $1 million. Get more info on the contest here. "

Department of redundancy department

[unitron]

Can I repost my posts to the first Goldbach story here in hopes of higher mod points or are posts to redundant stories automatically modded "redundant"? :)

Repeat...

[morris57]

FYI... [slashdot.org]

Maybe if the original title had been less ambiguos (sp?) it would not have been a repeat. Oh well...

Re:Hmm, let's see

[provolt]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but 1 is not a prime number. Niether is zero. Occationally, some texts will (incorrectly) refer to 1 as prime, but in the most strict sense, it is not prime because 1 is not greater than 1.

For more info check out this:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/article s/09415.html [encyclopedia.com]

provolt

What if....

[|deity|]

... you dispoved the theory? Would they still pay?

BTW you can all quit trying I proved it last night and I found an easy way to factor extremely large numbers in a very small amount of time.

Ok I lied. I don't think that number theory is advanced enough to solve the problem. To me the problem is related to creating a function to generate primes.

<off topic>Part of the problem of factoring primes *indirectly* is knowing all the primes below a certain size. If we ever find an easy way of factoring large numbers the currently popular encryption routines will be useless. Someday I expect to see a function that will allow you to find the nth prime, but not soon. Unless of course the NSA already has such a function then I NEVER expect to see it, unless someone from outside of the united states finds it on their own.</off topic>

6 = 3 + 3
8 = 5 + 3
10 = 7 + 3
12 = 7 + 5
14 = 11 + 3
16 = 11 + 5
18 = 11 + 7
20 = 13 + 7
22 = 11 + 11
24 = 13 + 11
26 = 13 + 13
28 = 17 + 11
30 = 17 + 13
32 = 19 + 13
34 = 17 + 17 = 23 + 11 = 3 + 31 = 5 + 29
36 = 19 + 17
38 = 19 + 19
40 = 23 + 17
42 = 23 + 19
44 = 31 + 13
46 = 23 + 23
48 = 29 + 19

Their are of course other sets of prime numbers that would work for many of these I showed a few for 34. When I look at the numbers listed in this way I almost see a pattern but I can't connect the primes to the sum.

I'll probably tinker with the problem but it would probably be cheaper in terms of what my time is worth to buy lottery tickets. And I would probably have just as good of a chance winning the lottery as *I* would of solving this problem.

Re:Hmm, let's see

[kilroy2000]

In that case, George should only get half of the money....

pointless

[rjrodger]

First - you have to prove it within the next two years to claim the cash - come on! We have been working on it for several hundred years. Very cheap publicity shot. Second - citing Goedel, Turing, Chaitin [umaine.edu] et al, the conjecture may be unprovable!

Re:pointless

[cheezehead]

Yes, it may be unprovable. But the fact that people have been working on it for hundreds of years does not say anything. The same goes for Fermat's Last Theorem, and that was proven a couple of years ago, after centuries of fruitless efforts...

Re:Hmm, let's see

[cheezehead]

Interesting. I think a prime number p is defined as a number that has exactly two divisors. That would be 1 and p, and therefore 1 does not qualify, since it has only 1 divisor.

Hmm, let's see

[georgeha]

2 = 1 + 1
4 = 3 + 1
6 = 5 + 1, or 3 + 3
and so on

well, it's obvious to me, and I don't want to keep wasting your time,

Send me the money.

George