Anyone read the book about Goldbach's conjecture, it says every even number that's larger than 2 can be formed by summing two prime numbers. A 250 year-old problem.
I heard it's been proved, is this true?
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Anyone read the book about Goldbach's conjecture, it says every even number that's larger than 2 can be formed by summing two prime numbers. A 250 year-old problem.
I heard it's been proved, is this true?
By summing, I assume you mean use the 2 primes as operands in an addition or subtraction calculation?
Well, there are plenty of paired-primes (17,19), (37,39) etc, so 2 can be made very easily. 19-17=2.
To get three, you can do 5-2=3.
4=11-7
5=7-2
6=11-5
7=?
Can't think of an immediate way to get 7...any prime number plus 7 yields an even number, which of course isn't prime material!
Or am I missing something?
- No, the rule is like so: Any even natural number can be formed by adding two prime numbers:
2n = p1 + p2
n: Any natural number larger or equal to two.
p1, p2: Any prime number.- The problem is that it hasn't been proved for the past 300 years or so. :rolleyes: