A new Mersenne prime has been found with the assistance of distributed computing: A computer professional in Norway, with the help of an online computing project, has discovered a new Mersenne prime. This sought-after number represents the 47th Mersenne prime discovered since ancient Greek mathematicians first uncovered them. (See the NPR story for details) A Mersenne prime is a positive integer satisfying the following equation while also being prime: $$ M_n=2^n-1.\ $$ n must be prime too, as a matter of consequence. The new number is about 13 million digits long and would require 3,461 pages to display the number […]
Daily Archives: June 16, 2009
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