Next set of prime birthdays for three brothers

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around whether three brothers, aged 6, 10, and 14, will ever share a prime number birthday in the same year. Participants explore the implications of prime numbers and their gaps, particularly focusing on the existence of three consecutive prime numbers with a specific gap.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Mathematical reasoning, Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests that the problem can be reframed as finding three consecutive prime numbers with a gap of four between the first and second pair.
  • Another participant proposes to limit the ages to a maximum of 130 years and lists the prime numbers under that limit, suggesting to check for patterns among them.
  • A different participant notes that the problem is equivalent to asking whether the number 4 appears twice consecutively in the Prime Gap sequence, indicating that this might be an open problem.
  • One participant asserts that there is no solution to the problem, arguing that the ages can be expressed as x, x+4, and x+8, and that one of these must be divisible by 3, thus ruling out the possibility of all three being prime in the future.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the possibility of the brothers sharing a prime birthday, with some proposing mathematical explorations and others asserting that a solution does not exist. The discussion remains unresolved with multiple competing perspectives.

Contextual Notes

Participants rely on assumptions about the ages and the properties of prime numbers, particularly regarding their distribution and gaps. The implications of modular arithmetic are also introduced without a definitive conclusion.

fernlund
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Hello! I have the following problem:

Three brothers are aged 6, 10 and 14 years old. Will they ever, in the future, have a prime number birthday the same year? Looking at all of the prime numbers between 1 and 100, it seems that they won't.

So I guess this is the same thing as saying: are there three consecutive prime numbers with a gap of four between the first and the second pair? Is there any way of proving this, or disproving this? Where do I start?
 
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Well, to be safe, let's assume none of the brothers lives beyond 130. The primes less than 130 are
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 127. Just run through them. Does the pattern you mention show up here?
 
fernlund said:
Hello! I have the following problem:

Three brothers are aged 6, 10 and 14 years old. Will they ever, in the future, have a prime number birthday the same year? Looking at all of the prime numbers between 1 and 100, it seems that they won't.

So I guess this is the same thing as saying: are there three consecutive prime numbers with a gap of four between the first and the second pair? Is there any way of proving this, or disproving this? Where do I start?

Hi fernlund,

This is a very interesting question. This is equivalent to asking whether in the Prime Gap sequence 4 occurs twice consecutively. I didn't find anything about the consecutive occurrences of numbers of the prime gap sequence so I suspect this might be a open problem.
 
Forget 100 years . There is no solution
the ages are x , x+4, x+8 and working mod 3 we have 0,1,2 not necessarily in order so one of them is divisible by 3. only solution is 3,7,11 that was 3 years before and not after
 

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