(Mostly) Confirmed: New Mersenne Prime Found

A reader writes "Distributed computing seems once more to be succesful. The combined effort of many pc's joining Primenet in search for a new Mersenne prime may have found there fifth result. Among them many belonging to /. readers. There is an unconfirmed claim for Mersenne prime #39 of over 3,500,000 digits, for which a considerable amount of money has been awarded. SETI looks for ET's messages, but found none sofar. Mersenne primes are used to tell ET about us. A previous found Mersenne number was used to show the advance of science on our planet in a message send into outer space. " The Primenet list has confirmed that while they still need to totally test it out (which should be done by the 24th), they believe that the number found today is the 39th positive.

So what if ET...

[iforgotmyfirstlogon]

...hasn't found this number is prime yet? Won't he/she just think this 3,500,000 digit number is a bunch of gibberish?

- Freed

What if...

[ellem]

ET has no concept of our numbers?

I always find the idea that ET is "like" us somehow. That Will Smith can get into and operate an alien spaceship.

Zog: Mumtar! The Earthlings have sent us I Love Lucy and now what appears to be a very large cable bill!

Mumtar: Destroy them!

Re:Waste of resources

[fistula5]

While a prime number with 3,500,000 digits might have a nice cool factor...

Actually, the cool thing about primes is their *lack* of factors.

No half assed help, please

[IdocsMiko]

Please don't volunteer for PrimeNet unless you are willing to devote yourself to the project. Too many people are signing up only to realize they are too busy for the task at hand.

If you can't do the time, don't do the prime.

(snort, snicker, guffaw, I can die a happy man now)

Re:What if...

[donutello]

What do you mean ET has no concept of numbers? How will we upload Macintosh viruses to their computers if he doesn't even understand numbers?