Prime number the 1970s, mathematicians and physicists have speculated that the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are connected to the energy levels of quantum systems. Prime numbers are also significant in quantum information science, thanks to mathematical structures such as mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures. The evolutionary strategy used by cicadas of the genus "Magicicada" makes use of prime numbers. These insects spend most of their lives as grubs underground. They only pupate and then emerge from their burrows after 7, 13 or 17 years, at which point they fly about, breed, and then die after a
Prime number theorem the notion that the "density" of primes around should be . This function is related to the logarithm by the asymptotic expansion So, the prime number theorem can also be written as . In fact, in another paper in 1899 de la Vallée Poussin proved that for some positive constant , where is the big notation. This has been improved to Because of the connection between the Riemann zeta function and , the Riemann hypothesis has considerable importance in number theory: if established, it would yield a far better estimate of the error involved in the prime number theorem than