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42nd Mersenne Prime Confirmed

Posted by Zonk on from the wooo-party dept.

Jazzer_Techie writes "The possible Mersenne Prime discovered last week has now been confirmed. This prime has 7,816,230 digits, which makes it not only the largest Mersenne Prime, but also the largest prime of any kind ever discovered. For those who don't want to take time to read the article, the prime is 2^25,964,951 - 1."

13 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. 2^25,964,951 - 1 by Joey+Patterson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can anyone post those digits in case the site gets /.'ed?

    1. Re:2^25,964,951 - 1 by mrspecialhead · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's an Exclusive Binary Preview!

      11111111111111111111111111111111
      11111111111111111111111111111111
      11111111111111111111111111111111...

      --Your free demo has expired. For access to the rest of this content, please subscribe!--

    2. Re:2^25,964,951 - 1 by Eric+Smith · · Score: 5, Funny

      My web site has the full expansion in binary. It's over 25 megabytes, so please don't download it unless you really need it.

    3. Re:2^25,964,951 - 1 by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hope your web server has gzip and/or bzip compression...

  2. Man. by DrEldarion · · Score: 5, Funny

    Those math freaks sure are a bunch of GIMPS.

  3. OMG by computerme · · Score: 4, Funny

    No Way!!

    2^25,964,951 - 1.

    Is my password! Oh Man, I guess everyone knows it now....

  4. And useful, too! by Eric+Smith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now we can use the 41st and 42nd for a 50 megabit RSA key.

  5. Its the answer! by Rs_Conqueror · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the 42nd one? I wonder if that means anything...

    --
    Behold, another webcomic!
  6. Re:Why? by irokitt · · Score: 4, Funny
    ...of what possible value is a really big prime number?


    I believe the search for Mersenne primes continues solely for the purpose of impressing women in bars. No, I don't think it would work either.
    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  7. Re:to put this into perspective by kanweg · · Score: 4, Funny


    So??

    Bill G.

  8. Big Deal - Javascript!! by XanC · · Score: 5, Funny

    I found it by leaving my browser open for a while on this page.

  9. Torrent by TorrentNinja · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here is a torrent of the prime number.. it's 25MB..

    M42.torrent

    Some good times testing bandwidth :)

  10. Re:Why? by onemorechip · · Score: 4, Funny

    It has reached the point where proving a number prime is MUCH easier than finding any factors of it.

    Unless the number in question is composite. In that case, it is MUCH easier to find factors of it, than to prove that it is a prime.

    --
    But, I wanted socialized health insurance!