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 a prime and a semiprime, the product of two primes. Also, any even integer can be written as the sum of six primes. The branch of number theory studying such questions is called additive number theory. Another type of problem concerns prime gaps, the differences between consecutive primes. The existence of arbitrarily large prime gaps can be seen by noting that the sequence formula_60 consists of formula_61 composite numbers, for any natural number formula_1. However, large prime gaps occur much earlier than this argument shows. For example, the first prime gap of length 8 is between the primes 89 and