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
Ramanujan prime Ramanujan prime In mathematics, a Ramanujan prime is a prime number that satisfies a result proven by Srinivasa Ramanujan relating to the prime-counting function. In 1919, Ramanujan published a new proof of Bertrand's postulate which, as he notes, was first proved by Chebyshev. At the end of the two-page published paper, Ramanujan derived a generalized result, and that is: where formula_2 is the prime-counting function, equal to the number of primes less than or equal to "x". The converse of this result is the definition of Ramanujan primes: The first five Ramanujan primes are thus 2, 11, 17, 29, and