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(Mostly) Confirmed: New Mersenne Prime Found

Posted by Hemos on from the one-more-down-another-to-go dept.

A reader writes "Distributed computing seems once more to be succesful. The combined effort of many pc's joining Primenet in search for a new Mersenne prime may have found there fifth result. Among them many belonging to /. readers. There is an unconfirmed claim for Mersenne prime #39 of over 3,500,000 digits, for which a considerable amount of money has been awarded. SETI looks for ET's messages, but found none sofar. Mersenne primes are used to tell ET about us. A previous found Mersenne number was used to show the advance of science on our planet in a message send into outer space. " The Primenet list has confirmed that while they still need to totally test it out (which should be done by the 24th), they believe that the number found today is the 39th positive.

7 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. just think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    just think if we dedicated all this computering power to a relevant problem...and before you ask, i'm a grad student in math, so don't call me out of touch with mathematics. i just think there are plenty of better problems (including w/in mathematics) than this, of course, why does my opinion matter?

  2. Perspective. . . by czardonic · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That we devote this much co-operation, time and energy to the quest for prime numbers while hatred, poverty, disease and environmental destruction continue to plague our race is hardly an advertisement for our planet's advancement.

    --
    Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
    1. Re:Perspective. . . by cburley · · Score: 5, Insightful
      That we devote this much co-operation, time and energy to the quest for prime numbers while hatred, poverty, disease and environmental destruction continue to plague our race is hardly an advertisement for our planet's advancement.

      Yes, and we're all awaiting your proposal for how to use a bunch of idle PCs and bandwidth to wipe out hatred, poverty, disease, and environmental destruction.

      Until you get back to us with that, stop complaining about how we entertain ourselves, okay?

      --
      Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
    2. Re:Perspective. . . by Microlith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That in spite of all the bad things happening, people can give all those who would tear them down the middle finger, and continue on in purely academic research?

      I think PART of humanity has advanced, but those who:

      a) cause misery
      b) profit off misery
      c) whine about misery

      haven't really gotten anywhere.

    3. Re:Perspective. . . by czardonic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think PART of humanity has advanced, but those who:

      a) cause misery
      b) profit off misery
      c) whine about misery

      haven't really gotten anywhere.

      You forgot:

      d) crow about how smart they are and squander their energy on trivialities.

      --
      Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
  3. Participate! by chuckw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, join in the fun. Go to www.mersenne.org to join. You've got an approximately 1 in 100,000 chance of winning the next EFF prize for finding a 10,000,000 digit prime number. That's way better than playing the lottery folks!

    --
    *Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
  4. Re:Hmm...what if they're not big on math? by intuition · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, I think it would be pretty hard for someone to devise a scenario where :

    a. some beings have reached the point (technologically, biologically, or otherwise) where they can recieve our message.

    b. they "notice" our message as not standard electromagnetic emissions

    c. they do not know anything about math

    I think A or B implies not C.