3. Main results
Edmund Landau’s conjecture states that the set
of primes of the form
is infinite, see [
13,
14,
18].
Statement 1.
Condition (1)remains unproven for.
Proof. For every set
, there exists an algorithm
with no input that returns
This
n satisfies the implication in Condition
(1), but the algorithm
is unknown because its definition is ineffective. □
Statement 2.
The statement
remains unproven inand classical logic without the law of excluded middle.
Let , and let for every positive integer n.
Statement 3.
The set
satisfies Conditions(1)-(4).
Condition(5)fails for.
Proof. Condition
(4) holds as
and the set
is conjecturally infinite. Due to known physics we are not able to confirm by a direct computation that some element of
is greater than
, see [
8]. Thus Condition
(3) holds. Condition
(2) holds trivially. Since the set
is empty or infinite, Condition
(1) holds with
. Condition
(5) fails as the set of known elements of
equals
. □
Statements 4 and 7 provide stronger examples.
Conjecture 1.
([1] (p. 443) and [5]). The are infinitely many primes of the form.
For a non-negative integer n, let denote .
Statement 4.
The set
satisfies Conditions (1)-(5)>
except the requirement that>
>
is naturally defined..
Condition (1)holds with.
.
30
.
Proof. For every integer
, 30 is the smallest integer greater than
. By this, if
, then
. Hence, Condition
(1) holds with
. We explicitly know 24 positive integers
k such that
is prime, see [
3]. The inequality
remains unproven. Since
, Condition
(3) holds. The interval
contains exactly three primes of the form
:
,
,
. For every integer
, the inequality
holds. Therefore, the execution of the following
MuPAD code
m:=0:
for n from 0.0 to 503000.0 do
if n<1!+1 then r:=0 end_if:
if n>=1!+1 and n<2!+1 then r:=1 end_if:
if n>=2!+1 and n<3!+1 then r:=2 end_if:
if n>=3!+1 then r:=3 end_if:
if r>29.5+(11!/(3*n+1))*sin(n) then
m:=m+1:
print([n,m]):
end_if:
end_for:
displays the all known elements of . The output ends with the line , which proves Condition (1) with and Condition (4) with . □
Definition 3.
Conditions(1a)-(5a)concern sets .
(1a)A known algorithm with no input returns an integer n satisfying .
(2a)A known algorithm for every decides whether or not .
(3a)No known algorithm with no input returns the logical value of the statement .
(4a)There are many elements of and it is conjectured, though so far unproven, that is finite.
(5a) is naturally defined. The finiteness of is false or unproven. has the simplest definition among known sets with the same set of known elements.
Statement 5.
The set
satisfies Conditions (1a)-(5a) except the requirement thatis naturally defined..
Condition (1a)holds with.
.
7
.
Proof. For every integer
, 7 is the smallest integer greater than
. By this, if
, then
. Hence, Condition
(1a) holds with
. It is conjectured that
is a square only for
, see [
17] (p. 297). Hence, the inequality
remains unproven. Since
, Condition
(3a) holds. The interval
contains exactly three squares of the form
:
,
,
. Therefore, the execution of the following
MuPAD code
m:=0:
for n from 0.0 to 1000000.0 do
if n<25 then r:=0 end_if:
if n>=25 and n<121 then r:=1 end_if:
if n>=121 and n<5041 then r:=2 end_if:
if n>=5041 then r:=3 end_if:
if r>6.5+(1000000/(3*n+1))*sin(n) then
m:=m+1:
print([n,m]):
end_if:
end_for:
displays the all known elements of . The output ends with the line , which proves Condition (1a) with and Condition (4a) with . □
Statement 6.
The set
satisfies the conjunction
To formulate Statement 7 and its proof, we need some lemmas. For a non-negative integer n, let denote the largest integer divisor of smaller than n. For a non-negative integer n, let denote the largest integer divisor of smaller than n.
Lemma 1. For every integer , . For every integer , .
Lemma 2. For every integer , .
Proof. 6553600 equals
and divides
.
.
. We need to prove that every integer
does not divide
. It holds as the set
contains 6553600 and 7812500 as consecutive elements. □
Lemma 3. The number is prime.
Proof. The following
PARI/GP ([
9]) command
isprime(6553600^2+1,{flag=2})
returns 1. This command performs the
APRCL primality test, the best deterministic primality test algorithm ([
19], p. 226). It rigorously shows that the number
is prime. □
In the next lemmas, the execution of the command
isprime(n,{
flag=2}
) proves the primality of
n. Let
denote the function
Lemma 4. The set is infinite.
Proof. Let
. By the inequality
and Lemma 1, for every non-negative integer
m, the number
is prime. □
Before Open Problem 1, denotes the set .
Lemma 5. For every and for every non-negative integer j, .
Proof. By the inequality
and Lemma 1,
□
Lemma 6. .
Proof. By Lemmas 2 and 3, for every even integer
, the number
is prime. Hence,
□
Lemma 7. and .
Proof. The number
divides
. Hence,
. The number
is prime. The set
contains 10000 and 12500 as consecutive elements. Hence,
. The number
is composite. □
Statement 7.
The setsatisfies Conditions (1)-(5)except the requirement thatis naturally defined.
Proof. Condition (2) holds trivially. Let denote . By Lemma 5, Condition (1) holds for . Lemma 5 and the unproven statement show Condition (3). The same argument and Lemma 6 yield Condition (4). By Lemma 4, the set is infinite. Since Definition 1 applies to sets whose infiniteness is false or unproven, Condition (5) holds except the requirement that is naturally defined. □
The set satisfies Condition (5) except the requirement that is naturally defined. It is true because is infinite by Lemma 4 and Definition 1 applies only to sets whose infiniteness is false or unproven. Ignoring this restriction, still satisfies the same identical condition due to Lemma 7.
Proposition 1.
No set will satisfy Conditions(1)-(4)forever, if for every algorithm with no input, at some future day, a computer will be able to execute this algorithm in 1 second or less.
Proof. The proof goes by contradiction. We fix an integer
n that satisfies Condition
(1). Since Conditions
(1)-(3) will hold forever, the semi-algorithm in
Figure 1 never terminates and sequentially prints the following sentences:
The sentences from the sequence (T) and our assumption imply that for every integer computed by a known algorithm, at some future day, a computer will be able to confirm in 1 second or less that . Thus, at some future day, numerical evidence will support the conjecture that the set is finite, contrary to the conjecture in Condition (4). □
The physical limits of computation ([
8]) disprove the assumption of Proposition 1.
Open Problem 1.Is there a setwhich satisfies Conditions(1)-(5)?
Open Problem 1 asks about the existence of a year
in which the conjunction
will hold for some
. For every year
and for every
, a positive solution to Open Problem
i in the year
t may change in the future. Currently, the answers to Open Problems 1–5 are negative.