I've never started a math thread before but I thought the time was right as the Rockets lost, and I just thought this was cool for whatever reason: Student finds largest known prime number DETROIT, Michigan (AP) --More than 200,000 computers spent years looking for the largest known prime number. It turned up on Michigan State University graduate student Michael Shafer's off-the-shelf PC. "It was just a matter of time," Shafer said. The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number. Shafer, 26, helped find the number as a volunteer on an eight-year-old project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Tens of thousands of people volunteered the use of their PCs in a worldwide project that harnessed the power of 211,000 computers, in effect creating a supercomputer capable of performing 9 trillion calculations per second. Participants could run the mathematical analysis program on their computers in the background, as they worked on other tasks. Shafer ran an ordinary Dell computer in his office for 19 days until November 17, when he glanced at the screen and saw "New Mersenne prime found." A prime number is a positive number divisible only by itself and one: 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Mersenne primes are a special category, expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, where "p" also is a prime number. In the case of Shafer's discovery, it was 2 to the 20,996,011th power minus 1. The find was independently verified by other participants in the project. Mersenne primes are rare but are critical to the branch of mathematics called number theory. That said, what is the practical significance of Shafer's number? "People are going to make posters of it to hang up on the wall," said Shafer, who is pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering. "It's a neat accomplishment, but it really doesn't have any applicability." As for his own standing in the world of mathematics, "I don't think I'm going to be recognized as I go down the street or anything like that." He said the method by which the number was found -- harnessing many computers together -- is more important than the number itself. "Somebody else could have found the number," he said. "You install the program on the computer and it takes care of itself." But "I get the credit, along with the people that developed the software." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/12/11/prime.number.ap/index.html
I was thinking the same thing. Its not like finding the next digit in pi where it will make calculations more accurate.
What Shafer doesn't know is that his daughter acidentally leaned on the backspace key for about a half hour. History was forever changed.
Maybe I'm just a math geek, but I think this is one of the coolest stories I've ever read! If I had known about the project, I would have surely donated my three PC's as additional power.
I mean, I can understand people who waste their time trying to balance kegs on their chin, or eat as many hot dogs in an hour as possible, because they're not really smart enough to do anything else... But really, we should be able to find better things for our intellectuals and scientists to do than figure out big numbers that have no practical application!
Isn't it true that prime numbers are valuable in data encryption schemes? But I can't imagine that using a number with over 6 million digits is really worthwhile for any real application.
Yeah but usually just the 6 or 7 digit kind, I believe. This one, well, this one is for crap that is super super secret, like the password to the secret GARM forum where Carroll Dawson and JVG post. On a serious note, I think they did this as an experiment in parallel computing rather than to do anything with the number itself
If we send this new prime number to aliens, they will believe (1) Earthlings are very bored, or (2) Earthlings are all autistic.
It says that that Mersennes primes are critical to number theory. Anyone know how, exactly, it's critical or even important? It just sounds/seems like a trivial, interesting fact.
