A 12 million digit prime number, the largest such number ever discovered, has landed a voluntary math research group a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The number known as a Mersenne prime, is the 45th known Mersenne prime, written shorthand as 2 to the power of 43,112,609, minus 1 . A Mersenne number is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two, the group stated.
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The computing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) made the discovery on a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Mathematics Department. Computing manager Edson Smith installed and maintained the GIMPS software at UCLA, and thousands of other volunteers also participated in the computation.
According to the GIMP Web site the massive prime was first verified on June 12th by Tony Reix of Bull SAS in Grenoble, France using the Glucas program running on Bull NovaScale HPC servers, one featuring Itanium2 CPUs and another featuring Nehalem CPUs. The prime was later independently verified by Rob Giltrap of Sun Microsystems using Ernst Mayer's Mlucas program running on a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 Server.
The $100,000 prize will be awarded during EFF's Pioneer Awards ceremony on October 22nd in San Francisco.
EFF's first Cooperative Computing Award, given for a prime number of at least a million digits, was awarded nearly 10 years ago. Two Cooperative Computing Awards are still up for grabs: EFF will award $150,000 to the first individual or group who discovers a prime with at least 100 million digits, and $250,000 for a prime with at least a billion digits, EFF stated.
The huge prime number discovery comes close on the heels of another massive number finding. A group of researchers in September said they, through a technique for multiplying large numbers, have figured out congruent numbers up to a trillion. Apparently no one had taken them beyond a billion for some reason.
In case you were wondering, the first few congruent numbers are 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 20, and 21. Many congruent numbers were known prior to the new research. For example, every number in the sequence 5, 13, 21, 29, 37, ..., is a congruent number. But other similar looking sequences, like 3, 11, 19, 27, 35, ...., are more mysterious and each number has to be checked individually. The calculation found 3,148,379,694 of these more mysterious congruent numbers up to a trillion, the researchers said in a statement.
The problem, which was first posed more than a thousand years ago, concerns the areas of right-angled triangles. The difficult part is to determine which whole numbers can be the area of a right-angled triangle whose sides are whole numbers or fractions. The area of such a triangle is called a "congruent number." For example, the 3-4-5 right triangle which students see in geometry has area 1/2 × 3 × 4 = 6, so 6 is a congruent number. The smallest congruent number is 5, which is the area of the right triangle with sides 3/2, 20/3, and 41/6, researchers stated.
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NO!
Correction: The computation of the "congruent numbers up to a trillion" is not provably correct. It assumes the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Rather, we have very strong evidence that those are the only congruent numbers under 1 trillion, but what they computed and what they claim is NOT what you have reported.
Disclaimer: I am a mathematician, and I personally know all of the authors of that paper.
loser
get a life
Correction
Actually he's a Winner.
Prime Numbers
I've found an equation for a pattern that contains only prime numbers (not all prime numbers are in it bet every entry is prime) so no feasible limit to the number of digits i could get for the nth entry in the series. How do i get money for this?
Hi Nelson, You have to be
Hi Nelson,
You have to be able to prove that you can generate a 100 million digit number that is prime. One way is a mathematical proof. Another is to use software to prove that a generated number is prime. For Mersenne numbers, there is a very efficient algorithm that can be used to verify primes, but this cannot be used for other numbers. With generic prime verification software, you'll be checking that number for hundreds of years. My suggestion is that you explain your equation here and ask for help:
http://www.mersenneforum.org/forumdisplay.php?f=56
35 NO prime. 31 prime! 37
35 NO prime. 31 prime! 37 prime!
Mathematics DOES Pay
I am flabbergasted that someone actually offers rewards for these useless endeavors. And Nelson, I would be hesitant to offer your equation to anyone else for fear that they'll run off with your money, if you truly have the means to collect on the pointless reward! So, just tell me how large prime numbers or congruent numbers help out society, beyond the desire to have your name praised publicly for your mathematical prowess (or computer skills).
Prime numbers are important
Prime numbers are important in computing. If you enjoy using a ATM or shopping online you use encryption. Encryption needs prime numbers.
http://www.cpaadvisor.us/sub/8_encryption.htm
Awesome! WOW who could do
Awesome! WOW who could do this? electronic cigarette
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