.
Prove that there are infinitely many primes of the form 6n - 1.
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Suppose there are finitely many primes of the form 6n − 1
and these are p1, p2, ...,
.
Take M =
.
If M is a prime, we have a contradiction, because, M is of the form 6n - 1 but not on our list.
If M is not a prime, then it has some prime factors
, none of which
are 2, 3, p1, p2, . . . ,
, so they must be of the form 6n + 1 or 6n − 1.
But if all the
are of the form 6n + 1 then their product would also have this form
which M does not. Therefore, at least one of the
is a new prime of the form 6n-1.
Thus our set was not complete, and we got a contradiction with the original assumption.
So, there are in fact infinitely many primes of this form.