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PRIME NUMBERS WITHOUT MYSTERY 2

Jânia Duha
Universidade Federal do Paraná – UFPR
Curitiba, Brasil

ABSTRACT

Prime numbers have been quoted since ancient times as a mystery. Through the centuries much has been
accomplished and there are several interesting works on this theme. One of the most interesting things about primes
is that despite the complexity of some models one should not forget that prime numbers are natural numbers.
Seeking the lost simplicity of ancient prime numbers theories, we will follow a slight different path, and yet, very
similar to the one presented by Erathostenes, more than 2000 years ago.
The model presented here was first developed at 2002. At that time, it became astonishing that words like
mystery were still in use concerning the prime numbers literature. As a result in 2004 the first Prime numbers
without mystery was released (Duha, 2004, 2004b) and now the updated version is being presented here. There is
more information concerning the periods of the knot numbers and a closer view to the prime numbers patterns. The
periodicity of these patterns yields as the key to the understanding of prime numbers. This work offers an
explanation to why Prime-numbers look randomly at first sight, or else, why the pattern cannot be easily seen
although it is there all the time. Finely, we conclude that: prime numbers do obey laws, very simple, indeed, do
follow patterns, very predictable, and can be completely explained, understood and predicted.

THE LOGICAL PATH - MODELING

The idea behind the Knot Model (Duha, 2002, no publication) is very simple. However as every one that
works with science knows, “do it simple” is not so easy at all. Every time you don’t understand something your first
solution is, in general, very complicated. The most simple is a model, the better. In fact, the logical path presented
here is the result of several hours of work and brain storms, because, at the beginning it was not so simple, but after
taking a second, third, fourth, etc. look to the initial ideas, new aspects rose up from the darkness of the unknown
and at the end, it became as simple as a first order equation can be.
The logical path showed itself very similar to the one that produced the Sieve of Eratosthenes, but with
some fundamental differences. These differences will allow us to answer such questions as: (a) where, prime
numbers can be found among the natural sequence of numbers? (b) how one can be 100% sure that the output is a
prime number without any test of primality? (c) are there patterns that rules its behavior? …and hundred of others
questions not so important, but still interesting, like: what are twin primes?
Now, let’s start from the beginning. First of all: a prime number is a natural number.
Natural numbers are a very simple sequence of all possible numbers that you will find if you add 1 to the
previous number in the sequence: 1, 2, 3, 4 ….
The number one is a construct number. By adding one successively you construct all the sequence. But the
numbers two and three are still “small” enough to be used as constructing blocks and they can provide a good part
of the natural numbers sequence as follows

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 ...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30

Now, let us point to the very simple fact that there is a part of the natural sequence that cannot be provided
by the 2 and the 3. When one tries to reproduce the natural sequence of numbers using the 2 and the 3 as construct
numbers, the first thing to be noted is that there is something missing! And, on the other hand, at the same time,
there is an overload of information at some points. The two and the three provides simultaneously the numbers 6,
12, 18, etc…We will call these repeated numbers as the "knots" of the sequence (in green) as follows

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 ...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30
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Note also, that these knots have always an odd number on the left and on the right side that cannot be
provided by the two or the three (in red). Let us call this special class of odd numbers around the knots as knot-
numbers (kn). If you look more carefully, you will note that some of these numbers are simple (can be divided only
by 1 and by their selves) and some are composite, or else, they are multiples of other knot-numbers (but only! knot-
numbers). So, the numbers around the knots can be simple (ks) or composite (kc). Note that, the ks numbers are also
known as prime numbers.
The knots, the knot-numbers and the composite knot-numbers are given by the following equations,
respectively
(1) k = 6ni ,
(2) kn = 6ni ± 1,
(3) kc = (6ni ± 1) (6nj ± 1), with ni = 1,2,3,4,5…, nj = 1,2,3,4,5…

The simple knot-numbers (prime numbers) are “always” knot-numbers but “never” composite knot-
numbers, or else, the sequence of prime numbers is given by

(4) Π ks = Π kn - Π kc

To find the knots with their respective knot-numbers don not requires any computational work. As a
consequence, the mapping of the primes (ks numbers) relies completely on the mapping of the kc numbers. So let’s
pay more attention to the kc numbers and its periodicities.
The kc numbers are composed by the multiplication of knot-numbers solely, or else: 5x5=25, 5x7=35,
5x11=55, 5x13=65, 5x17=85, etc.; and 7x7=49, 7x11=77, 7x13=91, etc.; and 11x11=121, 11x13=143, etc.; and so
on, for all the sequence of knot-numbers, as shown at Table 1.

Table 1 – First contributions of the kc numbers.

5 7 11 13 17 19 23 25 29 Periodicity
25 55 85 115 145 30
5 10-20
35 65 95 125
49 91 133 175 42
7 28-14
77 119 161 203
121 187 253 319 66
11 22-44
143 209 275
169 247 325 78
13 52-26
221 299 377
289 391 493 102
17 34-68
323 425
361 475 114
19 76-38
437 551

The kc numbers can be easily calculated (Eq. 3) and it is also, very easy to predict their behavior through
the infinity because they present a clear periodicity.
The sequence of knot-numbers with their respective knots is even easier to obtain and to predict. The knots
start at 6 and will appear always at intervals of six also: 6, 6+6=12, 12+6=18, 18+6=24, 24+6=30, etc. Note, that
you can be 100% sure that all known and unknown prime numbers will be located around a knot. A prime number
is a knot-number! Twin primes are knot-numbers that share the same knot!
All that you have to do is to discard the composite knot-numbers. After that, all numbers remaining around
the knots will be prime numbers with 100% of certainty and no need of any test. This is very similar to the
Eratosthenes sieve, however, note that there is a fundamental difference here. With the Eratosthenes sieve you
cannot switch numbers when calculating primes, but you can with the knot model. The Eratosthenes sieve works
well for small numbers but it became too heavy and useless when going to big numbers. The knot model hasn’t this
limitation and more, as we will try to show as follows.
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PRIME NUMBERS PATTERN

Figure 1 shows five bar-code patterns. The first pattern from the bottom is the kn pattern which has a
period Tn = 6, or else, starting at 6 (first knot), every point at 6 + 6n (with n=1,2…∞) is also a knot that, contributes
with two knot-numbers for the pattern. The second pattern is the kc(5) pattern with all multiples of 5 for the interval
we are focusing (5 to 469). The kc(5) period is T5 = 30 with two contributions at every 52 + 30n. The third pattern is
the kn(-5), or else, the kn pattern after subtracting the kc(5) contributions. The combination of these two patterns
will result on a new pattern for the kn numbers with Tn = 30. The fourth pattern is the kc(7) contribution with T7 =
42 and the fifth pattern is the kn pattern after subtracting the kc(7) with Tn = 210.

FIGURE 1 - Bar-code pattern for kn & kc numbers

kn(-5,-7)

kc(7)

kn(-5)

kc(5)

kn

5 25 49 259 469

Figure 1. From the bottom to the top: (a) kn numbers (two for every knot); (b) kc(5) numbers are the multiples of 5
starting at 52 = 25; (c) kn(-5) numbers after subtracting the kc(5) contributions; (d) kc(7) numbers are the multiples of 7 starting
at 72 = 49; (e) kn(-5,-7) numbers after subtracting the kc(5) and kc(7) contributions.

Every time you insert the contribution of a new set of multiples of a knot-number, the resulting pattern
changes and the new period quickly increases:
Tn ( −5) = 6 × 5 = 30
Tn ( −5,−7) = Tn ( −5) × 7 = 210
Tn ( −5,−7,−11) = Tn ( −5,−7) × 11 = 2310 , etc..
so that, every knot-number you consider, to built the composite knot-numbers and clean up the kn pattern will make
the period of the resulting pattern increase at approximately one order of magnitude.
The fifth pattern at Figure 1 (kn(-5,-7)) shows with 100% certainty which knot-numbers are not primes
(erased bars from the kn pattern) and “where” (bars) one have to search for a prime number. However, if you want
the final pattern (bars that are 100% primes), you will have to consider the contributions of the kc(11), kc(13),
kc(17) and kc(19). (Figure 2) There is no need to considerer multiples of 23, 25, 29, 31, etc. because their first
contributions are already too big for the desired interval (5 to 469) as follows: 232 = 529, 252 = 625 and, so on.
Also, lets point to the fact that only non composite knot-numbers (simple knot-numbers or prime numbers)
will contribute with new multiples to be discarded. As long as you move forward to bigger numbers it’ll increase
the number of kc numbers and decrease the numbers of ks numbers (primes) around the knots. This means that the
pattern tends to a nearly steady final (but never completely steady, because primes are infinite) pattern with a huge
period Tn.
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FIGURE 2 –Bar-code pattern for kn & ks (100% PRIMES) numbers

ks(prime)

kn(-5,-7)

kn

5 25 49 259 469

Figure 2. From the bottom to the top: (a) kn numbers (two for every knot); (b) kn(-5,-7) numbers after subtracting
the kc(5) and kc(7) contributions and (c) ks numbers (primes) after subtracting the kc(11), kc(13), kc(17) and kc(19)
contributions. Here one has 100% primes.

FIGURE 3 – Number of PRIMES for every thousand

Number of primes
200

y = -8.1863Ln(x) + 182.66
160

120

80

40

0
0E+00 1E+05 2E+05 3E+05 4E+05 5E+05 6E+05
Natural numbers

Figure 3. From zero to 50,000 the number of primes quickly decreases from 333 to 100 for every thousand.
Approximately 70% of the kn vanishes, remaining only 30% to be tested. The period of ks pattern is already huge at this point.

To work with big numbers doesn’t imply in consider “all” the kc contributions . The smaller kn are the
ones that contributes the most to clean up the final pattern because their periods are also small. For every 30 natural
numbers there are 2 contributions due to the 5 (sweeping up 2 kc); while, for example, the number 19 help us only
at every 114 natural numbers, an so on for bigger numbers. The prime numbers pattern itself (ks final pattern) is a
combination of patterns and this is why it “looks” randomly. It’s similar to a combination of several waves with the
same amplitude but different wavelengths: the final result will be a package with a huge wavelength. Also,
concerning the prime numbers pattern, lets remark that its period is always changing and growing, it’s always in
movement. At the number 25 the kn(-5) pattern start to run from 25 to the infinity, however it can be easily
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identified only from 25 to 49. From 49 to ahead the contributions of the number seven starts to run also and the
pattern changes, again. From 25 to 49 one can see a little peace of the kn(-5) pattern (as the small peak of an iceberg
above water). But from 49 ahead a new pattern starts to run, it’s the kn(-5,-7) pattern! From 49 to 121 one will be
able to identify the kn(-5,-7) pattern solely, but at 121 starts the kn(-5,-7,-11) pattern with its new period and so on,
to the infinity. For unaware eyes it may seem that there is no pattern in there. “They appear among the integers
seemingly at random, and yet not quite: There seems to be some order or pattern, just a little below the surface, just
a little out of reach." From: Underwood Dudley, Elementary Number Theory (Freeman, 1978). But the pattern is
there. Not a steady pattern (not a picture) but a moving pattern (as in a movie).
To map all the prime numbers among the natural numbers is not a hard task from the theoretical point of
view, but it’s something that will take some time, due to the computational work when dealing with huge numbers.
A good deal of the small primes are already mapped, but till now, no one was able to use the knowledge about the
distribution of the smaller primes to predict the biggest ones, only because, no one was able to “project” these
results to the infinity! And, to do so, all one needs is to be able to find the patterns and to predict its periods. To
generate a huge pattern (as clean as possible) and to project it to the infinity is a task that will take some effort and
time (from the computational point of view) but it’s something that one will has to do only once, because the
pattern will work forever! Remember, all patterns you construct for small knot-numbers, will work for the big ones
two, giving you a 100% certainty about the blanks in the plot (the kn that are discarded, or else, the kc
contributions) and a 50%, 70%, ...100% (depending on how many kc you considered) for the bar-points, ks
(primes).
Now, lets stop and pay some attention to the following: every time you subtract the contribution of the
multiples of a knot-number you are cleaning up the kn pattern from 5 to the infinite! For every thousand natural
numbers there are approximately 333 kn numbers, but the number of primes (ks) quickly decreases while the
magnitude of the natural number increases. At 50,000 approximately 70% of the knot-numbers already vanished
and the pattern will seem less crowded with only 30% of the initial lines. However, the period of such a pattern will
be huge!

FIGURE 4 –Fabric pattern for KN & KC numbers

Figure 4. From the bottom to the top: (a) kn numbers; (b) kc(5) contributions ; (c) kn(-5) numbers after subtracting
the kc(5) contributions; (d) kc(7) contributions; (e) kn(-5,-7) numbers after subtracting the kc(5) and kc(7) contributions.

Let’s remark, also, that there is no need of previous information about the primes before the interval you
are interested, you need only the information about the knot-numbers and they can be easily found. Also, you can
focus on any interval you want: from 5 to 469 or, for example, from ( 6 × 2123456789 ± 1 ) to ( 6 × 2 987654321 ± 1 ) ! It
doesn’t matter, because, you only need to discard the kc numbers at this interval. But the amazing thing is that to
save time and effort, all you have to do is to project the pattern (Figure 1) through the interval you are interested.
Lets say, based on Figure 1, one can predict, with 100% accuracy, without no calculations, that the number
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91 + 42 × 2123456789 is located around a knot and is not a prime! The same thing, for example, for
91 + 210 × 2123456789 . But, not of course, for 91 + 30 × 2123456789 , because the number 91 is a multiple of 7 (not 5).
Finely, let’s play a little with the patterns we have shown previously (Figure 1), in order to make them
more fun. To do so, let’s change the markers to big pink exes and see how it looks. Figure 4 shows the same data as
Figure 1, but now the plots look more like a fabric (instead of a bar code) with a characteristic pattern for the
threads. As long as you successively pull off the kc(5) and kc(7) threads, new patterns show up (patterns with
threads more loosely woven). A new pattern appears in front of our eyes every time we pull of the contributions of
the next set of kc numbers! There is beauty in theses patterns! And, as long as prime numbers are natural numbers,
it’s logic to expect finding these patterns in nature. Everything that grows sequentially (1+1, 2+1, etc.) should be
able, at some level, to express these beautiful patterns shown in Figure 4. The patterns are, indeed, so artistic that
they can be used as a t-shirt print! An artistic proof of the fact that: prime numbers do have patterns!!!
Finely let us finish with two golden quotes from The music of primes (Du Sautoy, M., 2003):
(1) "The primes have tantalized mathematicians since the Greeks, because they appear to be somewhat randomly
distributed but not completely so." (T. Gowers, Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Univ. Press, 2002,
p.118). Exactly! It seems randomly distributed but it isn’t.
(2) "There are two facts about the distribution of prime numbers which I hope to convince you so overwhelmingly
that they will be permanently engraved in your hearts. The first is that despite their simple definition and role as the
building blocks of the natural numbers, the prime numbers... grow like weeds among the natural numbers, seeming
to obey no other law than that of chance, and nobody can predict where the next one will sprout. The second fact is
even more astonishing, for it states just the opposite: that the prime numbers exhibit stunning regularity, that there
are laws governing their behavior, and that they obey these laws with almost military precision." (Don Zagier,
Bonn University inaugural lecture). I could not express myself better!

CONCLUSION

Note that we have started the knot numbers sequence at the number 5, but the real first knot is at the
number zero (6-6=0), what makes the number 1 the first knot number (a knot number on the right). At the opposite
side we have the reflection in the mirror: the negative knot-numbers. Note, again, that a prime number is always a
knot number for all number from 5 to infinity, there is no exception! This means that the number 2 and the 3 are
from different categories and cannot be called as prime numbers. Indeed they can be divided only by one and their
selves, but only because they are two small to have multiples. They are construct numbers as the number one, but of
second and third class.
Finely, prime numbers do obey laws (very simple, indeed), do follow patterns (very predictable) and can
be completely explained, understood and predicted. Prime numbers do look random at first sight, but they are not
random at all. They are puzzling, stunning, perplexing, magic, etc. but, cannot be described as a mystery.

REFERENCES

Duha, J. Prime numbers without mystery, Lecture at the Department of Mathematics of the Universidade Federal
do Parana - UFPR, Curitiba, Brasil, 2006.
Duha, J. Prime numbers without mystery, The Mathematics Preprint Server, www.mathpreprints.com, 2004.
Duha, J. Prime numbers as potential pseudo-random code for GPS signals, Boletim de Ciencias Geodesicas, v.10,
p.215-224, 2004b.
Du Sautoy, M. The music of the primes, 2003.