Posted on Oct 26, 2024
Man spent $2 million to find new largest prime number
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It’s been nearly six years since math devotees discovered the last largest known prime number, but the bar has officially been raised by over 16 million digits. On October 21, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a global community project dedicated to finding these incomprehensibly huge numbers, confirmed the 52nd Mersenne prime number is (drumroll, please) [login to see] -1. To translate, that’s equivalent to multiplying the number 2 together 136,279,841 times, then subtracting 1. The latest mathematical figure stretches to include 41,024,320 digits—a number so gargantuan that the .txt file housing it takes up 41.8Mb. For reference, .txt file for Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (587,287 words) is a paltry 3.4 Mb.
Man spent $2 million to find new largest prime number
Posted from popsci.com
Science
Money
Computers
Edited 2 mo ago
Posted 2 mo ago
Responses: 4
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Lt Col Charlie Brown I've had students do reports on Mersenne Primes for extra credit or to replace a low quiz grade. But to get this they must do an oral presentation in front of the class and be able to explain the process. Although fascinating, I hardly think I'd spend all this money to find this number!
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There has been a lot of money spent on this research, so the obvious question is how this will be used as a benefit, and is there an ROI associated with the research? **Curious**
Lt Col Charlie Brown Cpl Vic Burk
Lt Col Charlie Brown Cpl Vic Burk
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MSgt Aaron Brite
Primes and the process to discover them is a keystone of cryptography. ROIncomes down the road with better crypto tech
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I guess I understand the need for this but boy, that's a niche very few researchers want to get into.
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