This one is for BR

[Miss Kitty]

Humongous Prime Number Discovered

AP
posted: 7 HOURS 45 MINUTES AGO
comments: 244
filed under: Science News


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LOS ANGELES (Sept. 27) - Mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a 13-million-digit prime number, a long-sought milestone that makes them eligible for a $100,000 prize.
The group found the 46th known Mersenne prime last month on a network of 75 computers running Windows XP. The number was verified by a different computer system running a different algorithm.
"We're delighted," said UCLA's Edson Smith, the leader of the effort. "Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds."
It's the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA.
Primes are numbers like three, seven and 11 that are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one.
Mersenne primes — named for their discoverer, 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne — are expressed as 2P-1, or two to the power of "P" minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609.
Thousands of people around the world have been participating in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, a cooperative system in which underused computing power is harnessed to perform the calculations needed to find and verify Mersenne primes.
The $100,000 prize is being offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for finding the first Mersenne prime with more than 10 million digits. The foundation supports individual rights on the Internet and set up the prime number prize to promote cooperative computing using the Web.
The prize could be awarded when the new prime is published, probably next year.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2008-09-27 11:49:34

BR, does this make you all warm and fuzzy? Do they have subprime numbers?

[sunspotbaby]

I read about this and my only thought was how would you use a 13 MILLION DIGIT number anyway and why???

[Miss Kitty]

I read about this and my only thought was how would you use a 13 MILLION DIGIT number anyway and why???

...you are ONE up on me! You actually read this!

[steele mama]

Well, now I can rest easy tonight!

[Jdarg]

Reading Science News to fall asleep now?

[ClintClint]

I read about this and my only thought was how would you use a 13 MILLION DIGIT number anyway and why???

I've got ten digits that I can keep out of trouble----I tend to wave with just one!

[Beach Runner]

Thanks, Miss Kitty. I had not heard this.

A friend of mine and I email each other about Mersenne primes a few times a year -- I'm serious. NERD ALERT!

The properties of this set have long intrigued mathematicians. Once computers become even more powerful, computing the next few Mersenne primes will become less newsworthy.

[NoHall]

Do they get extra credit for involving the number 13, which is also prime?

[Johnrudy]

I read it in the paper this a.m. Made my day!

[Beach Runner]

I read it in the paper this a.m. Made my day!

You go, girl!

[Mango]

I read about this and my only thought was how would you use a 13 MILLION DIGIT number anyway and why???

Budget Deficit.

[sunspotbaby]

Budget Deficit.

I knew you would enlighten me.

[ckhagen]

Budget Deficit.

Or national debt

[Beach Runner]

My friend computed that, using a Times New Roman 12-point font, it would take 3925 pages (8.5x11) to print it out. We are both nerds. We like talking about this stuff.

He also said:
"While finding larger and larger Mersenne primes advances the way we perform distributed computations it does not clear the bar of number theory. Factoring composite numbers by using quantum computers does offer to radically change cryptography and number theory. Below is an old web site (2001) that describes the first factoring success of a quantum computer using 7 qua-bits and finding the factors of 15 = 3 *5 via Schor's algorithm:

http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/news.
20011219_quantum.html

A useful web site on quantum computing:

http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/quantum-one.html

I bet the NSA has a pretty good bit of its budget invested in quantum computing."