UCLA discovers 13-million digit prime number

[paperskater]

"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."

Original article here.

Holy crap, I didn't even know that there was a prize out there for this. My roommate and I were trying to list prime numbers by calculating in our heads. I got up to 19, he got up to 101 before he lost interest. I feel dumb.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

I'd be more impressed if they did that by hand.

Yow!!! It's a joke! It's a joke!!!

 

[zigaretten]

Original article here.

Holy crap, I didn't even know that there was a prize out there for this. My roommate and I were trying to list prime numbers by calculating in our heads. I got up to 19, he got up to 101 before he lost interest. I feel dumb.

We're suddenly knee-deep in prime numbers. According to this article:

http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

a Hans-Michael Elvenich discovered an 11 million digit prime about two weeks later (but too late for the prize.)

If you're a prime fan I recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222550092&sr=1-1


....it looks at primes all the way up to Goldbach, Riemann and Godel. And it makes it fun.