this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
1103 points (99.3% liked)

Science Memes

11189 readers
3156 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 63 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But it's the physicists' job to find this stuff.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 48 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, it's not like the mathematics lost any of the numbers. Get your shit together physicists.

[–] No_Change_Just_Money@feddit.de 61 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I mean mathematicians are still missing over 99.999% of prime numbers, so...

[–] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 18 points 6 months ago

They haven't even found more than two factors, one of which is one, for any prime number, either.

Get it together, Mathematicians.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

, or ℙ for short.

I think that should be all of them, but if you want to check, there are references on the website where we keep all the numbers detailing how to check any number, or to list all of them if you want an arbitrarily large pile or have infinite time on your hands. :)

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

1 being prime breaks a lot of the useful properties of primes, such as the uniqueness of prime factorization.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Isn't that function listing all the numbers? Not only the primes?

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't know if prime factorization is the correct English word for it but the operation I am referring to takes a (non zero) natural number and returns a multiset of primes that give you the original number when multiplied together. Example: pf(12)={2,2,3} if we allowed 1 to be a prime then prime factorization cease to be a function as pf(12)={1,2,2,3} and pf(12)={1,1,1,1,2,2,3} become valid solutions.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

You are correct. The person you're replying to misread my set as a fancy way of saying "all natural numbers", not "all primes".
So you're both right, in that if 1 were a prime, the primes would not work right, and if 1 were not a natural number then those would not work right.

Using the totient function to define the set of primes is admittedly basically just using it for the fancy symbol I'll admit, and the better name for where we keep all the primes is the blackboard bold P. 😊

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

Oh, no that's just the primes. I was responding to a person joking about how we don't even know all the primes, so I used a technical yet unhelpful definition of "the set of all primes" to be technically correct,xas is the mathematics way. :)

[–] Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 6 months ago

The technical term you're looking for is "almost all" prime numbers. Not joking btw.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Well they did demonstrate that in a non trivial system of axioms, there will always be true statements that are unprovable. Do they kinda accepted that they will never be able to find everything. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

Well, either they can't find everything in that system, or they can also find something that contradicts something else that's true.

It balances out, because while there's infinite facts they can't prove, there's also infinite lies they can prove.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

it's not like the mathematics lost any of the numbers

show me Pi then

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

I know exactly how to find it, and unless you're a mathematician I'm not sure you're authorized to know.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Dunno. Find me an i in the wild.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago

Whoa there, if you want it's physical location you'll have to ask a physicist, they're in charge of tangible things.
Otherwise, just take a turn perpendicular to the reals, or check in the platonic realm.

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 months ago

More astrophysicists