Missouri Researchers Find Largest Prime Number
By Bernie on 18 Jan 2006
I don't want my readers to worry, I'm not going to blog about mathematics; I only want to memorialize for my descendants that aside from my articles on beautiful women, Islamic Terror, Race, and politics I also love to read about Fibonacci numbers, Primes, and the foundations of mathematics.
I expect my articles on mathematics/physics will probably be my fewest of any category. So here is what interested me in the news recently:
Datamation, Grid Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
Using an international grid of about 70,000 computers, researchers this month discovered the largest known prime number.
The number, which is expressed as 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1, is a 9.1 million-digit figure. It was discovered by a team of researchers at Central Missouri State University.
The find is part of a special class of prime numbers called Mersenne primes. They are named after Marin Mersenne, a 17th century French monk who first studied the rare numbers 300 years ago, though Euclid first conjectured about them in 350 B.C. The latest number actually is the 43rd Mersenne Prime to be discovered.
It should be noted that 30402457 mentioned above, is itself a prime. It is a class of numbers known as Mersenne primes. Briefly, French mathematician Marin Mersenne identified a class of prime numbers that could be calculated with the simple formula M = 2n- 1 where n is also a prime number.
Ever since, a few mathematicians have searched for ever-larger primes.
BTW, 2 is the only even prime number. I find this certainly odd.
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