Science Saturday: a momentous day in Maths

The other day was a momentous landmark in analytical maths... we are inching ever so close to prove the Goldbach conjecture! This, the oldest unsolved problem in maths (after Fermat Last Theorem was solved in 1992) was first stated in a letter from Goldbach to Euler in the 18th century - in which he simply stated that every even number bigger than 5 can be stated as the sum of two prime numbers. (Examples: 6 is 1 plus 5; 10 is 3 plus 7. 100 is 47 plus 53. And so on). This has been proven empirically until  number 4,000,000,000,000,000,000, but not generally (for every number).

Related mathematical proof :-)

Up until last month, this had only been proven generally using 5 primes (ie - any even number can be stated as the sum of 5 primes).

Less than a month ago, this was now proven for 3 primes. We are getting close!

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