More left twin primes (below Mersenne p) than right twin primes

[drkirkby]

This is an observation I made looking at the exponents of Mersenne primes, that are twin primes. The following 13 Mersenne Prime exponents have a twin-prime below the exponent.

5, 7, 13, 19, 31, 61, 1279, 4423, 110503, 132049, 20996011, 24036583, 74207281

and the following 5 Mersenne Prime exponents have a twin-prime above the exponent.

3, 5, 17, 107, 521

5 is common to both lists. All Mersenne Prime exponents > 521 which are twin primes, have the twin below the prime exponent.

Is it just pure chance that one list is nearly 3 times the length of the other?

With so few data points, I suspect it is probably difficult to draw any conclusions, but I thought I would mention my observation.

Dave

[drkirkby]

Could an admit swap the title - the above and below are the wrong way around.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by drkirkby

Could an admit swap the title - the above and below are the wrong way around.

You should be able to edit the title yourself.
Edit the field as noted in the picture.

[drkirkby]

This is my attempt to change the title. Putting no text whatsoever resulted in an error about the message being too short.

[drkirkby]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

You should be able to edit the title yourself.
Edit the field as noted in the picture.

It does not appear to have changed the title of the original post. Not to worry - worst things happen at sea.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by drkirkby

This is my attempt to change the title. Putting no text whatsoever resulted in an error about the message being too short.

I think the edit would need to have been done
a) to the title of the first post in the thread, which is what names the thread;
b) within the time limit from posting that, which is one hour for us mere mortal non-moderators (outside of personal blogs where we are in effect moderator). Occasionally if I start an edit before the hour is up, and finish it after an hour has passed since first posting, it still goes through. But the next attempt to edit the same post does not.
Looks like a moderator handled it for you in this thread (guessing Uncwilly).

Now to thread subject matter.
Yes a 2.6:1 asymmetry is intriguing. The sample sets are necessarily terribly small.

I'm surprised that fully a third of known Mersenne prime numbers' exponents are twin primes. That seems likely to decline as more Mersenne primes are found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_prime

So for twins, both of which are exponents of Mersenne primes, we have
3 5; 5 7; 17 19. I'm guessing we'll find no more such cases.

Dividing the list of exponents of Mersenne primes about in half and considering twins in each "half",
3 5 7 13 17 19 31 61 107 521 1279 4423 of Mp#1 to #25, 12 out of 25, 48% for the lower part
110503 132049 20996011 24036583 74207281 of Mp#26 to #51, 5 out of 26, 19.2% for the higher part.

For some other statistics related to Mersennne Prime exponents see this.

[slandrum]

Originally Posted by kriesel

So for twins, both of which are exponents of Mersenne primes, we have
3 5; 5 7; 17 19. I'm guessing we'll find no more such cases.

There may be an infinite number of them, but my guess no-one's going to find one for a very long time if there are.

[kriesel]

I don't expect to live long enough to see the completion of searching up through exponent 10^8.5 or the 100Mdigit threshold, unless there's a huge paradigm shift. Moore's law is running out. https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...5&postcount=11 Maybe quantum computing will change things enough, someday/year/decade.
There comes an exponent level whose PRP or LL test is incalculable by conventional means because there's not enough mass in the known universe to store the full interim residues on, even at 10 bits/subatomic particle. And most of that hypothetical memory's mass is very far from other parts of it, implying VERY low clock rates and iteration rates.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by kriesel

I don't expect to live long enough to see the completion of searching up through exponent 10^8.5 or the 100Mdigit threshold, unless there's a huge paradigm shift.

If we can get SRBase to apply the BOINC power to the area just ahead of the wave of Cat 4 assignments that would help a bunch (we could go 3 or 4 bits higher). Eliminating the need for the DC's will pay-off eventually.

[a1call]

I am reminded of this thread:

https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...&postcount=196

BTW It seems to me that google is not indexing this site in an exhaustive manner.

[slandrum]

What will push things far beyond what we can currently imagine will be a breakthrough in theory - something new and unexpected that will allow things to progress in ways we don't know yet.

That may be around the corner, or it may be centuries in coming.