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MSU student finds largest prime number
Woodrow:
DETROIT - More than 200,000 computers spent years looking for the largest known prime number. It turned up on Michigan State University graduate student Michael Shafer's off-the-shelf PC.
"It was just a matter of time," Shafer said.
The number is 6,320,430 digits long. It would take 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number.
Shafer, 26, helped find the number as a volunteer on an 8-year-old project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Tens of thousands of people volunteered the use of their PCs in a worldwide project that harnessed the power of 211,000 computers, in effect creating a supercomputer capable of performing 9 trillion calculations per second.
Shafer ran an ordinary Dell computer in his office for 19 days until Nov. 17, when he glanced at the screen and saw "New Mersenne prime found."
A prime number is a positive number evenly divisible only by itself and 1 - 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Mersenne primes are a special category, expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, where "p" also is a prime number.
In the case of Shafer's discovery, it was 2 to the 20,996,011th power minus 1.
The find was independently verified by other participants in the project.
Mersenne primes are rare but are critical to the branch of mathematics called number theory.
Shafer said the method by which the number was found - harnessing many computers together - is more important than the number itself.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/health/bal-te.primenumber11dec11,0,7198855.story?coll=bal-health-headlines
Woodrow:
Only thing I wanna know is why are these nerds messing around with prime numbers when i don't have:
[*]a flying car
[*]a cold vaccine
[*]a jet backpack
[*]an AIDS vaccine
[*]A house on the moon
[/list]
JTSimon:
--- Quote from: Krayzie-Eyez Killah on December 11, 2003, 07:16:03 PM ---Only thing I wanna know is why are these nerds messing around with prime numbers when i don't have:
[*]a flying car
[*]a cold vaccine
[*]a jet backpack
[*]an AIDS vaccine
[*]A house on the moon
[/list]
--- End quote ---
[*]Tooth Regeneration
;D
Don Jacob:
--- Quote from: Max Powers on December 11, 2003, 07:26:20 PM ---
--- Quote from: Krayzie-Eyez Killah on December 11, 2003, 07:16:03 PM ---Only thing I wanna know is why are these nerds messing around with prime numbers when i don't have:
[*]a flying car
[*]a cold vaccine
[*]a jet backpack
[*]an AIDS vaccine
[*]A house on the moon
[/list]
--- End quote ---
[*]Tooth Regeneration
;D
--- End quote ---
sounds more like something british scientists should be searching for,lol
JTSimon:
--- Quote from: Don Jacob Corleone on December 12, 2003, 01:54:55 AM ---
--- Quote from: Max Powers on December 11, 2003, 07:26:20 PM ---
--- Quote from: Krayzie-Eyez Killah on December 11, 2003, 07:16:03 PM ---Only thing I wanna know is why are these nerds messing around with prime numbers when i don't have:
[*]a flying car
[*]a cold vaccine
[*]a jet backpack
[*]an AIDS vaccine
[*]A house on the moon
[/list]
--- End quote ---
[*]Tooth Regeneration
;D
--- End quote ---
sounds more like something british scientists should be searching for,lol
--- End quote ---
Then I would never have to go to the dentist... ;D
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