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This is one of my favourite mysteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conjecture

How is it that all even number are the sum of 2 primes and odd number the sum of 3 primes?



The odd number sums follow from the fact about the even numbers.


Why though?


If you can make any even number with 2 primes, you can make an odd number by subtracting one odd prime from the odd number first (e.g. 3) and the resulting even number with 2 more primes.


We don't know whether it's true.


Well, then it's a great mystery of up to 10^18: "T. Oliveira e Silva ran a distributed computer search that has verified the conjecture for n ≤ 4 × 10^18"


It is true but unproven.




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