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Topic | The 50th known Mersenne Prime has been discovered. |
Tmaster148 01/05/18 9:33:34 PM #1: | https://www.mersenne.org/primes/press/M77232917.html The new prime number, also known as M77232917, is calculated by multiplying together 77,232,917 twos, and then subtracting one. It is nearly one million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. It is only the 50th known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly difficult to find. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered the last 16 Mersenne primes. Volunteers download a free program to search for these primes, with a cash award offered to anyone lucky enough to find a new prime. Prof. Chris Caldwell maintains an authoritative web site on the largest known primes, and has an excellent history of Mersenne primes. Though I will say for 14 years of work, $3000 is pretty small compensation. Still it's 46 million digits long and if you wanted to you could download the number off the link I shared. Still pretty interesting and long prime numbers like these are pretty good for encryption. --- ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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