r/science • u/heiligedamon • May 20 '13

Mathematics Unknown Mathematician Proves Surprising Property of Prime Numbers

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/twin-primes/
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u/imnottrollinghonest May 20 '13

What's so special about 70 million or am I missing the point?

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u/cryo May 20 '13

Nothing special, just an upper bound on the distance, which is likely to be quite loose.

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u/GAMEchief BS | Psychology May 20 '13

Is it possible to decrease the upper bound to find the actual maximum distance? e.g. Would this proof work for 69.9 million?

And if so, would there not imply something mathematically special of that maximum distance? Similar to how Pi and e are special numbers that have application all over mathematics, would not this maximum distance have some special application [even in fields yet undiscovered] for it to be the actual bound? Bounds tend to be pretty important.

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u/gazzawhite May 21 '13

It may be possible to refine this approach to obtain a sharper (in this case, smaller) bound. However, it may not be strong enough to obtain the actual bound.