[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 11, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H1729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TWIN PRIME NUMBERS

  (Mr. McNERNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. McNERNEY. Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about twin prime 
numbers. Twin primes are two prime numbers separated by a single 
number, like 11 and 13, or 17 and 19. The question is, Are there an 
infinite number of twin primes? It was the general consensus of the 
mathematical community until just recently that that question was 
beyond the capability of our current mathematical community.
  However, there have been some stunning advances on this problem in 
the last few years. In particular, last May, with the help of an online 
collaborative project, mathematicians pioneered new methods for 
addressing this problem with a huge breakthrough from Tom Zhang at the 
University of New Hampshire. We now know that there are an infinite 
number of prime number pairs separated by amounts smaller than 270.
  While the twin prime problem itself is still unsolved, mathematicians 
are hopeful that this year they can reduce the separation from 270 to 
less than 100.

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