From researchers at Princeton:
The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials.
The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement of its atoms. The analysis could lead to predicting primes with high accuracy, said the researchers. The study was published Sept. 5 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment.
“There is much more order in prime numbers than ever previously discovered,” said Salvatore Torquato, Princeton’s Lewis Bernard Professor of Natural Sciences, professor of chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. “We showed that the primes behave almost like a crystal or, more precisely, similar to a crystal-like material called a ‘quasicrystal.'”
Primes are numbers that can only be divided by 1 and themselves. Very large primes are the building blocks of many cryptography systems. Primes appear to be sprinkled randomly along the number line, although mathematicians have discerned some order. The first few primes are 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11, becoming more sporadic higher in the number line.
Torquato and his colleagues have found that that, when considered over large swaths of the number line, prime numbers are more ordered than previously believed, falling within the class of patterns known as “hyperuniformity.”
Hyperuniform materials have special order at large distances and include crystals, quasicrystals and special disordered systems. Hyperuniformity is found in the arrangement of cone cells in bird eyes, in certain rare meteorites, and in the large-scale structure of the universe.
The team showed that the order they found in the prime numbers maps to the pattern that results when X-rays interact with certain forms of matter. As a chemist, Torquato is familiar with X-ray crystallography, shining X-rays through a crystal’s three-dimensional atomic lattice. With diamonds or other crystals, this will result in a predictable pattern of bright spots or peaks, known as Bragg peaks. Kevin Mcelwee, “Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials” at Phys.org
That’s funny when you consider that the universe is supposed to be without meaning or purpose.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
See also: Mathematics: “Particle collisions are somehow linked to mathematical ‘motives.’”
and
Universe fine-tuned for carbon, hence life, says astronomer Hugh Ross at Salvo: Fine-tuning the universe for the existence of carbon is not sufficient; unless the quantity of carbon in and on a planet is also fine-tuned, physical life—and certainly advanced physical life—will not be possible.
The fact that there are patterns to prime numbers does not exactly mean that there is meaning and purpose in these patterns.
R J Sawyer:
Only to those firmly wed to materialism
R J Sawyer,
Thank you for such a delicious turn of phrase.
Andrew
asauber
I thought it would amuse people. 🙂
That unexpected mathematical pattern found in a ‘quasicrystal” reminds me of these unexpected mathematical patterns found in nature:
Of related note:
A further note on finding math in weird places:
It’s paywalled, so I can’t tell whether they have actually found an exact correspondence between primes and crystal x-ray scattering behavior, or if it’s merely that the densities show a similar pattern averaged over large spans.
re 6: I suspect the latter. An exact correspondence would be massive news.
EDTA, here is an article, from May, that gives a little more background. (spoiler alert, Number theorists remain unimpressed)
EDTA et al. – there is also a preprint on arXiv. You’re right, they do just show that the density has some structure.
ba77 – thanks for the link, it’s nice to see the context of the work.
RJ Sawyer,its not just one “coinsidense” in in the relationships between information, mathematics, and the physical world that suggest design, it’s the fact that every where we look we find very real and precise order that is practically screaming order and purpose that we logically derive from our everyday understanding of the difference between something random and something designed for a purpose.
Indeed it is thousands of things from the moon’s perfect position in size when compared to the Sun for a complete solar eclipse to the resonance required in making the carbon atom produced in seemingly perfect amounts, 2 life’s use of immaterial information encoded in decoded to manufacture the basic machines with inside the cell. Science begins with our rational intuition, and in the design argument it is the totality of a supposed coincidences that we compare in relationship 2 our everyday experience that screams design.
By the way the quasicrystal is used in one of the more popular quantum gravity proposals starting with the E8 Crystal which includes the golden ratio and units of consciousness to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics.
This idea that a biologist has to continually remind himself that what he is looking at is not designed but instead, contrary to all the evidence and probability against it, simply a crapshoot. In so many ways this is anti-science as there is no reason to assume such an illogical starting point simply to maintain a worldview where physical stuff, that is in fact simply waves of probability is primary, when in fact it seems that Consciousness and mind are primary and space time and matter are derivative.
The idea we can avoid these obvious indicators of design bye suggesting our own Consciousness is an illusion and then we are one of in nearly infinite amount of universes, is a mark of desperation to keep a worldview alive rather than a true desire to understand reality.
Beautifully worded, Tom.
Or maybe they are as scattershot as number theorists have thought for some time now. A quote:
“The formula for the Bragg peaks was mathematically equivalent to the Hardy-Littlewood k-tuple conjecture, a powerful statement made by the English mathematicians Godfrey Hardy and John Littlewood in 1923 about which ‘constellations’ of primes can exist.”
So it looks like they just found a novel way to shine up (get it?) patterns that had already been found by other means.
But why the match?
>But why the match?
I would guess the match is just due to the excellent (and miraculous) way that numbers and physical reality match up. Like the Fibonnaci sequence and how sunflower seeds correspondingly spiral around in the center of a sunflower. These guys have found another such matchup between nature and math.
The creator had me at ?????? = -1
The creator had me at ei? = -1
Ignore previous
Oh well, no decent font support.
P.S. What’s wrong with the editor, or is it just my browser?
e^(i•pi) = -1 is Euler’s Identity, and follows immediately from the fact that e(ix) = cos x + i • sin x.
I don’t see where that shows up in this article, though.
It’s not in the article. By “creator”, I mean the creator of the virtual reality we find ourselves in. Not the creator of the article.