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New Possible Record Prime Number Found

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the my-number-is-bigger-than-yours dept.

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."

11 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. /.ed by dascandy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Their computers can calculate a prime number with 10,000,000 digits, but they can't even serve a webpage? Jeez... where are your priorities?

    1. Re:/.ed by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Funny
      Their computers can calculate a prime number with 10,000,000 digits, but they can't even serve a webpage?

      Ah, but... a number of ten million digits? That has to take up ~ 10MB of disk space. And now the link's been posted to /., where every lunatic is now clicking on it and thinking that by some bizarre geek savant superpower they're going to somehow look at it and go 'yup, that's prime all right' or something...

      No wonder the server's a smoking crater now :)

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    2. Re:/.ed by tie_guy_matt · · Score: 3, Funny

      10MB of disk space? No problem just gzip the file ... oh no wait never mind!

  2. Re:10 million? by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    42 million? How unimaginative. Personally, I'd like to see a huge prime with a prime number of digits...

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  3. Why anything? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why do people calculate digits of pi? Why do they scale mt. Everest? Because they have small penises.

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    Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
  4. Re:FYI by gowen · · Score: 4, Funny
    The largest known prime that is not a Mersenne prime is 27653 × 29167433 + 1.
    Erm... isn't that an even number?

    (Yes, I know, your "to the power of" got nobbled).
    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  5. Headlines by sanctimonius+hypocrt · · Score: 4, Funny

    The number of primes found lately, four in just over two years, is higher than previously expected.

    I can just imagine the newspaper report: Scientists report more numbers than previously thought.

  6. Re:10 million? by BarryNorton · · Score: 4, Funny

    Our comment numbers, 14297779 and 14298043, are also both prime...

  7. New Possible Record Prime Number Found by anshil · · Score: 5, Funny

    Smallest Positive Mersenne Prime-Number ever: 3

    Hey, also small is beatuiful.

    --

    --
    Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
  8. Products of primes by ockegheim · · Score: 3, Funny

    Last week while factorizing random 5 digit numbers with a calculator (very bored at work) I decided that if a number has two prime factors it can't have any other factors. Is this true, and is the mathematics behind it obvious or complicated?

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    I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
  9. Re:Why prime numbers ? by fastgood · · Score: 4, Funny
    the more primes are known, the less secure your encryption becomes

    But the more we know about those people who calculate primes in their spare time,
    the safer America will become.