Twin Primes

Date: 5/16/96 at 14:30:13
From: The Green Vale School
Subject: Twin Primes

Is there an infinite number of twin primes?

Date: 5/16/96 at 20:53:25
From: Doctor Ken
Subject: Re: Twin Primes

Hello!

One of my fellow math doctors, Doctor Jodi, found this information 
about twin primes:


 The world's largest known pair of twin primes is

     190116 x 3003 x 10^5120 - 1 and 190116 x 3003 x 10^5120 +1

 These are numbers of the form n - 1 and n + 1, both of which are 
 primes. Other examples are 17 and 19, and 101 and 103.

 The largest pair, above, have 5129 digits each. They were discovered 
 on 9 October 1995.  It is thought that there are infinitely many 
 pairs of twin primes, but nobody has been able to prove this.

Jodi found this information on a web site, and you can visit it too if 
you want to.  The URL for it is 

  http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/largest.html   

Here's a question for you.  How many _triplet_ primes are there, three 
odd numbers in a row (for instance, 3, 5, 7) such that each one is a 
prime?  Can you prove your answer?

-Doctor Ken,  The Math Forum
 Check out our web site!  http://mathforum.org/dr.math/