enthalpy

Tuesday, March 29, 2005


And I thought my post last month about prime numbers was totally pointless. Apparently there are people that are out there, right now, looking for even bigger prime numbers.
An eye surgeon in Germany has discovered the world's largest known prime number -- or at least his computer did.

The surgeon, Dr. Martin Nowak of Michelfeld, is among thousands of participants in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, one of several big projects that tap idle computers worldwide.

Last month, Nowak's Pentium 4 computer concluded that a number it had been crunching on for more than 50 days was indeed prime, with only two integer divisors, 1 and itself.

A different computer using different software verified the result.

The number, rendered in exponential shorthand, is 225,964,951-1. It has 7,816,230 digits, and if printed in its entirety, would fill 235 newspaper pages.
I bet he's really great at parties. "Hey, baby, wanna see the biggest prime number? The last digit is 4."



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