40th Mersenne Prime Found 99
FenwayFrank writes "A release from New Scientist announces that the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search found another one: 2^20996011 - 1 is prime. Weighing in at 6,320,430 digits (6 megabytes of prime number...), it becomes the world's largest. Slashdot readers may remember then announcement of the 39th Mersenne Prime, a mere 3.5 million digits."
Re:6 million digits can be stored in under 6 megab (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, the number was probably originally calculated using base-2 arithmetic (I'm assuming), so storing in binary might be more natural anyhow.
Subatomic Particles (Score:2, Interesting)