
A discovery about prime numbers and what it means for the future of math (2013) - akbarnama
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/do_the_math/2013/05/yitang_zhang_twin_primes_conjecture_a_huge_discovery_about_prime_numbers.single.html
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gojomo
Text appears to be a cut & paste of Slate's article on the topic from May
2013:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/do_the_math...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/do_the_math/2013/05/yitang_zhang_twin_primes_conjecture_a_huge_discovery_about_prime_numbers.single.html)

(They include a link to Slate at the bottom, but no hint they've cut & pasted
the entire text as if it were their own with the new September 24, 2014
publication date.)

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nkurz
This is a wonderful article, but the blog spam URL should be changed to the
original:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/do_the_math...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/do_the_math/2013/05/yitang_zhang_twin_primes_conjecture_a_huge_discovery_about_prime_numbers.html)

"Impact Lab" has scraped the entire 5-month old article from it's original
publication, and republished it verbatim with their own ads on it. While they
link to original at the bottom of the full article (no mention on the teaser
page), this is egregious copyright infringement. This appears to be their
entire business model: [http://www.impactlab.net/impact-lab-advertising-rate-
sheet/](http://www.impactlab.net/impact-lab-advertising-rate-sheet/)

HN should ban them. Slate (and the other infringed parties) should sue them
out of existence. It should be an open-and-shut case.

~~~
dang
We noticed that and banned the site last night, but didn't change the url on
this post. We've changed it now—sorry for the delay.

~~~
manicdee
NB: changes to article URLs post-publication don't appear to be reflected in
the RSS feed.

~~~
dang
Thanks! Adding to list to fix.

Edit: Apparently they are in fact updated, so you are likely either seeing
cached items or your RSS client isn't picking up the changes.

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mappu
HN discussion from 500 days ago -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703219)

What has changed since then?

~~~
chrisbennet
Well, Zhang _announced_ his findings this month (Sept 2014).

 _Yitang “Tom” Zhang, a popular math professor at the University of New
Hampshire, stunned the world of pure mathematics this month when he announced
that he had proven the “bounded gaps” conjecture about the distribution of
prime numbers._

~~~
gojomo
That's false. His announcement was April 2013, with paper accepted in May
2013. This site, impactlab.net, has simply plagiarized an old article from
Slate and put a new date on it.

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akbarnama
Another article which talks about this -
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-m...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-
mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/)

~~~
huhtenberg
That's a much better read. Thanks!

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theoh
From the article "The gaps between successive powers of 2 grow exponentially,
and there are finitely many gaps of any given size; once you get past 16, for
instance, you will never again see two powers of 2 separated by a gap of size
15 or less."

Unless I am mistaken, the gaps between powers of two never repeat. They keep
getting bigger by a factor of two each time, right?

~~~
x1798DE
Gaps are 2^n-2^(n-1) = 2^(n-1)*(2-1) = 2^(n-1)

So yeah, the gaps are just powers of 2.

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ch
So does this mean that the primes actually distribute based on some pseudo
random pattern?

Certainly that is trivializing things but is this what the notion of the
numbers acting random, but clearly not being random implies?

~~~
lutusp
> So does this mean that the primes actually distribute based on some pseudo
> random pattern?

To prove this, we would have to identify the hypothetical pseudorandom
pattern. If we successfully identified the pattern, we could locate primes
deterministically. If we could locate primes deterministically, modern
encryption would collapse.

So ... no. No one knows how primes are distributed among composites, and there
may be no pattern, as that term is generally understood.

> Certainly that is trivializing things but is this what the notion of the
> numbers acting random, but clearly not being random implies?

Yes, but with the important distinction that a pseudorandom pattern can be
recreated, given the genesis of the pattern. For example, a pseudorandom
number generator will produce exactly the same pseudorandom numbers for a
given initializing "seed" number.

As to the primes, it's possible that their placement among the composites
obeys a pattern, but we don't know what that pattern is, and this is a matter
of great mathematical interest.

