New Possible Record Prime Number Found

An anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed computing project, has probably found a new record prime number. Two verification runs have started; no errors were found in the initial calculation. The number of primes found lately, four in just over two years, is higher than previously expected. This prime is just under 10 million digits, which means that one of the participants in the project makes a good chance to obtain his or her part of the EFF prize of $100,000 for the first prime of over 10 million digits in the coming months. In 2000, one of the Gimps participants collected the $50,000 reward offered."

Comments

Cancer as nature

[SeanDuggan]

I'm always tired of the "well, this research is nice but I'd rather they searched for a cure for cancer instead".
Besides which, cancer is part of life. Any living organism that survives to the late years is going to contract some form or degree of cancer. Really, we brought it upon ourselves by extending the longevity of the human race...

Above text is to read with tongue firmly in cheek. Any offense generated by reading in any other mode is entirely the fault of the user.