On the last day of August, a human mathematician kicked off a flurry of advances on one of the most famous problems in number theory — and was almost instantly superseded by AI.
Julia Stadlmann of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign reported a new record in the quest to solve the twin prime conjecture, which posits that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that are just two numbers apart (3 and 5 are twin primes, for example, as are 17 and 19). It was the first such advance in more than a decade.
We summarize the week’s scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
It’s a “fiendishly difficult problem,” says mathematician Kannan…
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