New Largest Prime Found: Over 7 Million Digits 305
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."
I hate to be a pushover... (Score:5, Interesting)
Distributed Computing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In case you missed it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Distributed Computing? (Score:2, 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.
The real question (Score:1, Interesting)
As a corollary, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:4, Interesting)
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);
}
What if (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't it possible that some civilisation is so advanced that their 'bc' would give back the 50th mersenne prime just like our bc would return 3*5
Wouldn't it be cool to find out that the msg you've just now found on SETI isn't gibberish but a hi from another advanced civilisation
OMG again (Score:1, Interesting)
Am I seeing things
Who ever the hell moderated the parent needs some medication.
This AC was replying to one who didn't RTFA, and gets modded down by another who definitely RTFA.
(Karma be damned : I am no better than an AC now anyway)
Re:Legit uses for Mersenne Primes (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't use one that's based on factoring, then. Go for a discrete-logarithm based cryptosystem, like ElGamal. Mmmm... 23-megabit asymmetric key... (Now we just need a 3-megabit hash function to make the signatures worthwhile. Oh, and some serious silicon to push the electrons required for a digital signature with a key that size. Ooog.)
Re:I hate to be a pushover... (Score:2, Interesting)
I consider it an extremely good way to attempt to impress chicks, since chicks who are impressed by this kind of thing are more likely to be chicks.
A slightly different challenge (Score:1, Interesting)
One thing I'd like to know is, what is the smallest unknown prime number? And more importantly, is there an award for finding it, thereby making it no longer unknown?