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40th Mersenne Prime Found

Posted by michael on from the primal-urges dept.

FenwayFrank writes "A release from New Scientist announces that the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search found another one: 2^20996011 - 1 is prime. Weighing in at 6,320,430 digits (6 megabytes of prime number...), it becomes the world's largest. Slashdot readers may remember then announcement of the 39th Mersenne Prime, a mere 3.5 million digits."

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here's something stupid to do. by infornogr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Statistically, whoever has the forum ID with the lower number of digits. Somehow I think the nine people that would have to duke it out to answer your question won't respond to this post, however.

  2. 40th? by Tom7 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not necessarily the 40th Mersenne Prime, just the 40th that we've found. We still need to prove many ones in between to be composite before we can mark its place as 40th.