On 20 Mar 00, at 19:01, Stefan Struiker wrote:
> LONDON , March 17 � Two publishers are offering a
> million dollars to anyone who can prove that all
> even numbers are the sum of two prime
> numbers. No one has cracked the problem in the
> more than 250 years since it was first posed, and
> Friday�s announcement indicated the publishers
> aren�t too worried about having to pay up.
The piece on BBC Radio 4's "Today" program suggested that the
publishers would only lose whatever money they paid in as a premium
to their insurance company against the possibility that a proof would
be found. Since it appears that noone has any real idea about how to
set about the job, an eminent mathematician suggested that $100 would
be a reasonable premium.
I think it's probably a lot more likely that someone will claim
$250,000 for finding a 1,000,000,000 digit prime number this year
than that Goldbach's Conjecture will be proved in my lifetime.
Of course, a counterexample to Goldbach could crop up at any time.
Have fun ...
Regards
Brian Beesley
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