3 ms·

I might be way off here ... but does this not have implications for RSA encryption .. isnt the whole concept resting on the fact that two prime numbers cant be

• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• kazagistar 13y ago
  Yep, way off, sorry. This has basically nothing to do with factoring. This is just proving that there is never a point beyond which no two prime numbers are 600 or less apart.
• gizmo686 13y ago
  It has not actually been proven that RSA is backed by the difficulty of factoring. That is to say, it may be possible to break RSA without an efficient way to factor numbers. However, an efficient way to factor numbers does break RSA. Having said that, there is no obvious way that this result helps with factoring. Indeed, the Twin Prime Conjecture states that the gap is actually 2. Obviously, this has not been proven, but if there was a way to use a proof of this fact to efficiently factor numbers, then we would have used that method without the proof. If it ends up not working, then we would have disproven the Twin Prime Conjecture.
• jrockway 13y ago
  > isnt the whole concept resting on the fact that two prime numbers cant be factored No. Prime numbers have no factors. RSA uses two prime numbers multiplied together to create a number with only two prime factors; factoring that number is the hard part if it's large enough. This discovery has nothing to do with factoring large numbers.