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Mathematicians make major discovery about prime numbers
- cleverjake 12y agoearlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8782890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8782890
- _delirium 12y agoAnd another earlier discussion (of the original Quanta article that Wired reprinted): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731040
- chuckup 12y agoSpeaking of large gaps between primes - There is a Bitcoin clone recently released called "Gapcoin" which replaces the SHA256 hash-breaking with finding large prime gaps. It seems completely unknown and has very few people mining it, yet it already broke a few hundred records, and is one spot away from breaking Donald Knuth's record in the "top 20 highest merit gaps" http://primerecords.dk/primegaps/gaps20.htm http://primerecords.dk/primegaps/gaps20.htm http://gapcoin.org/primegaps.php http://gapcoin.org/primegaps.php I am curious if there is any scientific use for finding these high-merit gaps? Or is it the same usefulness as finding a slightly longer expansion of PI?