LOS ANGELES - Mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a 13 million-digit prime number, a long-sought milestone that makes them
eligible for a $100,000 prize.
The group found the 46th known Mersenne prime last month on a network of 75 computers running Windows XP. The number was verified by a different
computer system running a different algorithm.
"We're delighted," said UCLA's Edson Smith, the leader of the effort. "Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds."
It's the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA.
Primes are numbers like three, seven and 11 that are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one.
Mersenne primes — named for their discoverer, 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne — are expressed as 2P-1, or two to the power of "P"
minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609.
Thousands of people around the world have been participating in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, a cooperative system in which
underused computing power is harnessed to perform the calculations needed to find and verify Mersenne primes.
The $100,000 prize is being offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for finding the first Mersenne prime with more than 10 million digits. The
foundation supports individual rights on the Internet and set up the prime number prize to promote cooperative computing using the Web.
The prize could be awarded when the new prime is published, probably next year.BDx13 - 9-28-2008 at 08:49 PM
beware, it's a 16MB text file, so it'll take a while to load.upyerbum - 9-28-2008 at 09:01 PM
I'm actually reading a book right now on the search for / history of the concept of infinity. Pretty heady stuff. There's a whole chapter on prime
numbers.Six66Mike - 9-28-2008 at 09:10 PM
Haha I read about this on the CBC site a couple weeks ago, a student from Carleton was involved. They didn't show the number though, just said
printed it would be 3,000 pages long.
read about it ealier
in another life I'd be working on the large hadron and tryng to blow up the planetJawnDiablo - 9-28-2008 at 11:17 PM
that's a big fuckin number right there....defstarsteve - 9-28-2008 at 11:19 PM
that's how much money we owe china right nowclevohardcore - 9-28-2008 at 11:25 PM
At first I thought this was the US deficit.DaveMoral - 9-29-2008 at 12:20 AM
HAH! Pretty cool huh. Makes you think.XHonusWagnerX - 9-29-2008 at 08:58 AM
I think I might be retarted because I'm not even totally sure what that means.DaveMoral - 9-29-2008 at 10:16 AM
Basically it means infinite is really fucking huge. Haha.
It's kinda like if you calculate the probability of life existing on earth, chances are pretty slim. Makes you realize 1) how we and our entire lives,
the entire lives of everyone that has ever existed and the entirety of human civilization aren't even a drop in the bucket on the universal stage and
2) what an incredible miracle the existence of all lifeforms on the planet really are.XHonusWagnerX - 9-29-2008 at 10:29 AM
but it seems to be that numbers are infinate. Like why cant you just add another 1 to the begining of what they did and thats a bigger number?defstarsteve - 9-29-2008 at 10:30 AM
but it also makes you realize that with how vast the galaxy is there must be other life forms out thereBDx13 - 9-29-2008 at 11:03 AM
honus - it's not just a matter of coming up with a big number.
cause, you're right...i could sit a my computer for a year typing numbers, and at the end, be like, "look, a wicked big number!"
this number, the 13 million digit long number, is a prime number - it is only divisible by 1 and itself.
sure, there are lots of other prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, , , , , 101, , , , , , 577, 1951, 7919, etc), but as more and more are
identified, the challenge becomes, "how large will a number be before we find another prime?"
in my opinion, it is when you start to comprehend these numbers relative to what steve and dave are talking about that you start to get into
mind-blowing philosophical considerations. i mean, i can comprehend that my hand is 8 inches long, my tv 50 inches, my driveway 40 feet, my drive to
the store a mile, but a light year? what the fuck is a light year?
a light year is 5.8 trillion miles.
the farthest known galaxy is 13.23 billion light years away.
ok, that math makes my head explode...and these are things we know. this is something that exists, and we've managed to find it, despite it being
7.77682087 × 10(22) miles away.
so what about the things we don't know about?XHonusWagnerX - 9-29-2008 at 11:10 AM
Oh... okay... I understand now. I feel a little stupid, but I guess the problem was that I wasnt sure what a prime number was.
I am surprised that there isnt some sort of computer program that could just run at thousands of digits per second and find all the prime numbers no
matter how high.BDx13 - 9-29-2008 at 11:21 AM
that's how they came up with this 13-million digit number.
except, the software required the processing power of 75 computers!chris - 9-29-2008 at 11:53 AM
very cool. Also Upyerbum what's the name of the book?DaveMoral - 9-29-2008 at 06:44 PM
In the end, it kind of shows the futility of anyone saying "we have all the answers." We don't have all the answers... maybe just a few. Scientists,
religion... we're just scraping the surface of all the knowledge there is to know, and then there's the question of whether or not our feeble minds
are even capable of knowing even the most minute amount of that knowledge.Six66Mike - 9-29-2008 at 08:01 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by BD
a prime number - it is only divisible by 1 and itself.
sure, there are lots of other prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, , , , , 101, , , , , , 577, 1951, 7919, etc)
I've read that over & over on multiple sites & I still don't get prime numbers at all. I thought 1 could be divided into any number, and any number
could be divided by itself.
See I'm confused beyond reason with prime numbers. I just know this is really fucking big loldefstarsteve - 9-29-2008 at 08:14 PM
4 is not prime becasue it can be divided by 1,2, and 4
6 can be divided by 1,2,3 and 6
7 is prime because it can only be divided by 1 and 7
hope that helpsgodabandonedme - 9-29-2008 at 09:32 PM
Sorry for my spelling I don't have the shit in front of me. I read the book Paralle Worlds by Micho KiKou (again sorry about the spelling not in
front of me) anyway some fucking awsome physics shit about time travle other universes etc. in laymens terms....sorta...alot of the shit i couldn't
understand but oh well it was a great read and made me want to punch people when I didn't know what I was reading....barc0debaby - 9-29-2008 at 11:03 PM
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great sciencie book for those who have a hard time getting around the big ideas. I learned
alotta shit that i could never figure the fuck out in school.upyerbum - 9-30-2008 at 01:16 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by chris
very cool. Also Upyerbum what's the name of the book?
The Mystery of the Aleph (Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the search for Infinity) its written by Amir D. AczelDaveMoral - 9-30-2008 at 09:47 PM
Interesting theory. It would contradict the Copernican test of whether or not we live in a special place and are thus... special. IE, not normal for
the universe at large.BDx13 - 10-1-2008 at 10:32 AM
