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New Largest Prime Found: Over 7 Million Digits
from the tim-adds-2-and-takes-credit-for-the-next-one dept.
Gilchrist continues "If you want to see the number in written in decimal, Perfectly Scientific, Dr. Crandall's company which developed the FFT algorithm used by GIMPS, makes a poster you can order containing the entire number. It is kind of pricey because accurately printing an over-sized poster in 1-point font is not easy! Makes a cool present for the serious math nut in your family.
For more information, the press release is available.
Congratulations to Josh and every GIMPS contributor for their part in this remarkable find. You can download the client for your chance at finding the next world record prime! A forum for newcomers is available to answer any questions you may have.
GIMPS is closing in on the $100,000 Electronic Frontier Foundation award for the first 10-million-digit prime. The new prime is 72% of the size needed, however an award-winning prime could be mere weeks or as much as few years away - that's the fun of math discoveries, said GIMPS founder George Woltman. The GIMPS participant who discovers the prime will receive $50,000. Charity will get $25,000. The rest will be used primarily to fund more prime discoveries. In May 2000, a previous participant won the foundation's $50,000 award for discovering the first million-digit prime."
Legit uses for Mersenne Primes (Score:5, Funny)
But Pseudoprimes? Probability of primeness? Hah! You people cut corners!
Re:Legit uses for Mersenne Primes (Score:4, Funny)
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I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every Mersenne prime gives rise to a perfect number [wolfram.com].
To answer your question a little more seriously the number is not much use in itself but like many peices of research the route to the goal often turns out more interesting information than the goal. GIMPS pushes back the bounds on many levels such as highly optimised coding and mathematical DC.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Informative)
In the end, what does this get us?
Please elaborate for those of us who need a reason to care about primes, perfect numbers & the like.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Funny)
Kinda kicks you in the ass when people say "ok, what good is it?"
I know what good it is. It's a way of keeping 'scientists' employed (scientific welfare) so they don't pollute the job and gene pools.
I'm considering doin research on the 'how', 'why', and 'classification' of belly button lint. I'm sure there's a government funded grant in it. We REALLY NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS 'just in case' they are usefull in the future.
Yeah, let's keep the scientists out of the gene pool, maybe even replace them with Christian Scientists(tm). I mean, why would we want people to have even the slightest hint of intellegence, I mean, the public, dear lord. You should let the current administration know you have devised such an excellect scheme for them...
Not that I'm saying this guy is a scientist, but whatever... Oh yeah, and you're a troll, but I couldn't help myself.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Funny)
Notice I said it's an attempt, I didn't say it would work;)
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Funny)
In other words, it's not the size of your prime number, it's how you use it that counts.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, I didn't tell that right.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Informative)
So right now, this is the largest proven prime number at this point in time. It is 1,000,000 digits larger than the next largest known prime number, (which is also a mersenne prime).
There very well may be a day where primes this large will be used for encryption purposes. But this may be a long way off.
Keep in mind, that so much of the underpinnings of today is based on mathematics from the 1600's to the early 1900's. The math we pursue today will most likely reach a practical application point next century.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Funny)
Teacher: Ok class, your homework for tomorrow is to find a Mersenne prime longer than 1,000,000 digits. *By hand*. I don't want to see any computer printouts.
Class: *Groan*
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because of the Lucas Lehmer primality test, which you can google if you want to see the details.
The standard proof of primality involves factoring the number one less than or one greater than the prime. Obviously, the number one greater than 2^p-1 is easily factored, which is the basis of the test.
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Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Interesting)
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In case you missed it (Score:5, Informative)
Thought I would drive the point home as this is a great DC project that doesn't receive half the attention of some of the more dubious DC projects...
Re:In case you missed it (Score:3, Funny)
Phew, crisis averted. Good job!
Even primes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Even primes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Even primes (Score:3, Funny)
Proof of that will require a recalled grey market Pentium 1 with an FDIV "feature" added to it.
All math people wishing to prove / find your number must also "upgrade"
Re:Even primes (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Even primes (Score:3, Funny)
Distributed Computing? (Score:3, Interesting)
So... (Score:3, Funny)
Not in this case... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not in this case... (Score:5, Insightful)
Theorem For any positive odd integer n, 3 divides 2^n+1
Proof We will use the Principal of Mathematical Induction.
Basis When n=1, we have 2^n+1=2^1+1=3. Furthermore, when n=3, we have 2^n+1=2^3+1=9.
Induction Now suppose n is a positive odd integer, and that 3 divides 2^n+1. We will now show that 3 divides 2^(n+2)+1.
Since 3 divides 2^n+1, there exists an integer q such that 2^n+1=3*q
2^(n+2)+1=2^(n+2)+4-3
=2^2*2^n+4-3
=4*(2^n+1)-3
=4*3*q-3
=3*(4*q-1)
=3*r, r=4*q-1
Where r is an integer by the closure properties of multiplication and subtraction.
QED
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Re:Not in this case... (Score:5, Insightful)
if T = 2^(2p+1) + 1:
T = 2^(2p+1) - 2 [mod 3]
T = 2(2^2p - 1) [3]
T = 2(4^p - 1) [3]
T = 2(1^p - 1) [3]
T = 0 [3]
qed
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Want a simple proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
= (-1)^(odd number)+1 [mod 3]
= -1 + 1 [mod 3]
= 0 [mod 3]
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harrumph (Score:5, Funny)
Say all you will, but Optimus is still the ultimate prime.
My Hashtable (Score:5, Funny)
As a corollary, (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, this is very important....... (Score:5, Funny)
I knew it (Score:5, Funny)
That poster is a scam! (Score:4, Funny)
Picture Frame (Score:3, Interesting)
Without frame: $77.00
With frame: $247.00
SCO's claim that their code has been stolen sounds more logical than this!
Here is the whole number! (Score:5, Funny)
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
Sorry
fermat was here (Score:5, Funny)
I will verfiy on my 66mhz running windows 3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
Call me Fermat (Score:3, Funny)
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Last digit is a 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
int i;
int p = 1;
int m = 1000000000;
for (i = 0; i < 24036583; i++)
p = p*2 % m;
p = (p+m-1) % m;
printf("%d\n", p);
}
Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
That primate must have big hands...
6 years (Score:4, Informative)
Started with a p120 laptop, at times had a dozen computers teamed up.
In that time
When it is found.. (Score:3, Funny)
When it is found that computer will be wondering: 1 $100.000 hookerbot or 100.000 $1 hookerbots?
Verification (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Primality is in P (Score:3, Informative)
BTW wasn't the polynomial order 6 whenever a unproved-but-likely hypothesis was true?
Re:Primality is in P (Score:4, Informative)
http://primepages.org/
'proving'
YAW.
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Re:So an Itanium GHz is worth less that a P4 GHz? (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention that you can't expect the threading to scale perfectly. I'm surprised that there are any gains at all because the LL algorithm is so sequential. I remember hearing that Glucas could have done it in half the time on that machine if it had been optimized for NUMA, though.
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