Sixty-five million sound like a big deal by any standard.
That is the size of the improvement that an online army of collaborating mathematicians has already made
To a groundbreaking proof involving pairs of prime numbers which was first announced Just a few weeks ago.
Though the improvement is big , mathematically speaking it amounts to a technicality. Still the achievement showcases a new way of doing mathematics online. Since
The proof appeared mathematicians from across the world have been locked in an addictive race to tighten it up.
The work relates to a longstanding problem called the twin prime conjecture. A prime
Number can only be divided by 1 and itself, and twin primes are those just two numbers apart, like 3 and 5,or 29 and 31 . the conjecture, put forward in 1849,says there are an infinite number of these pairs, but no one has managed to prove or disprove it.