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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."

2 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Participate in the search by Drooling_Sheep · · Score: 5, Informative

    GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search

    They have Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OS/2 clients.

  2. Re:Largest known perfect number? by MC68000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    yes. There is a theorem due to Euclid that every even perfect number (a number which is the product of all of its divisors except itself) is of the form
    (2^n-1)*2^n. The given form does not apply to odd perfect numbers, but it is unknown whether any odd perfect numbers exist.

    --
    E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3