[Math] Infiniteness of non-twin primes.

elementary-number-theoryprime numbersprime-twins

Well, we all know the twin prime conjecture.
There are infinitely many primes $p$, such that $p+2$ is also prime.
Well, I actually got asked in a discrete mathematics course, to prove that there are infinitely many primes $p$ such that $p + 2$ is NOT prime.

Best Answer

Let $p\gt 3$ be prime. If $p+2$ is not prime, we are happy. If $p+2$ is prime, then $(p+2)+2$ is not, since one of $x,x+2,x+4$ is divisible by $3$.

Added: Dolda2000 noted that a more interesting question is whether there are infinitely many primes that are not members of a twin pair. For this we can use the fact that there are infinitely many primes of the form $15k\pm 7$. If $p$ is such a prime, then one of $p-2$ or $p+2$ is divisible by $3$, and the other is divisible by $5$, so if $p\gt 7$ then neither $p-2$ nor $p+2$ is prime.

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