Finding the First Trillion Congruent Numbers 94
eldavojohn writes "First stated by al-Karaji about a thousand years ago, the congruent number problem is simplified to finding positive whole numbers that are the area of a right triangle with rational number sides. Today, discovering these congruent numbers is limited only by the size of a computer's hard drive. An international team of mathematicians recently decided to push the limits on finding congruent numbers and came up with the first trillion. Their two approaches are outlined in detail, with pseudo-code, in their paper (PDF) as well as details on their hardware. For those of you familiar with this sort of work, the article provides links to solving this problem — from multiplying very large numbers to identifying square-free congruent numbers."
Re:Why? (Score:1, Funny)
It's how Derren Brown really predicted the lottery numbers.
Re:Hard Drive? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer (Score:5, Funny)
But it doesn't look like there's much hope for anyone resolving BSD in the foreseeable future.
Of course not. Netcraft has already confirmed that BSD is dead.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
.... Specifically, they had to figure out news ways of multiplying numbers, since the numbers they wanted to multiply were larger than their hardware's main memory.....
Perhaps these are the guys that should have been working for Enron? I'm just sayin -- new ways of multiplying numbers...!
Re:virtual memory (Score:1, Funny)
The 80's called. They want their hacked paged memory architecture invented because of crappy small address buses back.
Re:Hard Drive? (Score:3, Funny)
At least their Hard Drive works, mine wont turn on anymore after I spilled a little coffee in the cup-holder. Stupid foreign electronics.
Anyway, can't they just have the Geek Squad put in more Gigabytes?
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Math gives you a highly addictive mind/mood altering experience? Hmm... We must have tried different Math.
You are. The addictive one is called "Crystal Math."
Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)
Can I then ask, what must have happened in one's life, that he considers that to be "fun"? ;)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)
\section{Re:Why?}
Well \emph{of course} not...
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
After all, If we had a way to post readable formulas and uncommon chararacters, this wouldn't be the Slashdot comments section