New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers

PhysOrg.com ^ | May 8th, 2009 | Lisa Zyga

[decimon]

In a recent study, Bartolo Luque and Lucas Lacasa of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have discovered a new pattern in primes that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until now. They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford’s law. In addition, this same pattern also appears in another number sequence, that of the leading digits of nontrivial Riemann zeta zeros, which is known to be related to the distribution of primes. Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications in areas such as fraud detection and stock market analysis.

[Travis McGee]

The NSA’s old motto used to be “ten years ahead of the state of the art.”

They probably knew this and more ten years ago.

If they have been breaking PGP, they sure wouldn’t announce that fact.

[Straight Vermonter]

ping

[Squantos]

Agree.......I would go as far as 20 years ahead in tech and such.

[CodeToad]

“(Just kidding. I have no idea what they are talking about.)
“

LOL! Sometimes my wife looks at me like a curious dog hearing a high pitched whistle.

[Oatka]

If now there is some algorithm that can predict where those primes exist, them it would be possible to use that algorithm to break the public key. Good-bye security.

I am mathematically challenged but if it can be used to break a current key, could not the decoders go back to previous messages and break them also? If so, lots of new worriesd in the intelligence community.

[grey_whiskers]

*PING*

[stripes1776]

I am mathematically challenged but if it can be used to break a current key, could not the decoders go back to previous messages and break them also? If so, lots of new worriesd in the intelligence community.

Yes, I think you are correct. If you could use an algorithm to break a key, it would not matter when that key was generated--now, in the past, in the future.

[Myrddin]

The observed patterns may well impact the security of public key encryption e.g. RSA that depends on the product of two large prime numbers.

[Myrddin]

I am mathematically challenged but if it can be used to break a current key, could not the decoders go back to previous messages and break them also? If so, lots of new worries in the intelligence community.

The common practice is to use of level of encryption that is unbreakable before the value of the information expires. If a message details troop movements tomorrow morning, but takes a week to crack, that is good enough. Just because you figured out the key for one message, you haven't accomplished much. The keys will be changed before the next message goes out.

[Brellium]

I am mathematically challenged but if it can be used to break a current key, could not the decoders go back to previous messages and break them also? If so, lots of new worriesd in the intelligence community.

We were doing that with the Soviets after the second world war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VENONA

[ViLaLuz]

Pi was a very strange movie. I love the scene where he finds his brain in the subway station.

[Oatka]

We were doing that with the Soviets after the second world war.

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff.

[patton]

You, um, care to publish that methodology?

[patton]

I quit after I worked out the quadrature of the loon, myself.

[ResponseAbility]

Yea, that’s where he figures out which part of his brain was damaged from looking at the sun for too long.

[TigersEye]

Just goes to show that we can find GOD in the smallest of places.

The human mind? lol