Wednesday, January 11, 2017

The Riemann Hypothesis


Jørgen Veisdal, Medium: The Riemann Hypothesis, explained

In loving memory of John Forbes Nash Jr.

You remember prime numbers, right? Those numbers you can’t divide into other numbers, except when you divide them by themselves or 1? Right. Here is a 3000 year old question:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, p. What is p? 31. What is the next p? It’s 37. The p after that?41. And then? 43. How, but… …how do you know what comes next?

Present an argument or formula which (even barely) predicts what the next prime number will be (in any given sequence of numbers), and your name will be forever linked to one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, akin to Newton, Einstein and Gödel. Figure out why the primes act as they do, and you will never have to do anything else, ever again.

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