40th Mersenne Prime Found

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."

Comments

Re:6 million digits can be stored in under 6 megab

[notyou2]

Because that involves an actual conversion between bases, which means that re-extracting (to print the digits out in base 10 again, for example) takes a non-trivial amount of time.

On the other hand, the number was probably originally calculated using base-2 arithmetic (I'm assuming), so storing in binary might be more natural anyhow.

Subatomic Particles

[Kosher Beef Jerky]

I was informed today that there are, in the universe, approximately 10^450 subatomic particles in the world. A prime number of 6 million digits (6* 10^100000) cannot be possibly demonstrated in any real object. I proceeded to calculate: Apparently the highest resolution for a monitor so far is 3840x2400 (Can anyone find higher?) and it would therefore take about 108506945 monitors of this resolution just to display 1 quadrillion pixels... (10^12). Any thoughts?