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from the how-many-bits-required-to-represent-that-solution? dept.
New largest known prime number found:
RALEIGH, NC., January 3, 2018 -- The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 277,232,917-1, having 23,249,425 digits. A computer volunteered by Jonathan Pace made the find on December 26, 2017. Jonathan is one of thousands of volunteers using free GIMPS software available at www.mersenne.org/download/.
The new prime number, also known as M77232917, is calculated by multiplying together 77,232,917 twos, and then subtracting one. It is nearly one million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. It is only the 50th known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly difficult to find. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered the last 16 Mersenne primes. Volunteers download a free program to search for these primes, with a cash award offered to anyone lucky enough to find a new prime. Prof. Chris Caldwell maintains an authoritative web site on the largest known primes, and has an excellent history of Mersenne primes.
The primality proof took six days of non-stop computing on a PC with an Intel i5-6600 CPU. To prove there were no errors in the prime discovery process, the new prime was independently verified using four different programs on four different hardware configurations.
- Aaron Blosser verified it using Prime95 on an Intel Xeon server in 37 hours.
- David Stanfill verified it using gpuOwL on an AMD RX Vega 64 GPU in 34 hours.
- Andreas Höglund verified the prime using CUDALucas running on NVidia Titan Black GPU in 73 hours.
- Ernst Mayer also verified it using his own program Mlucas on 32-core Xeon server in 82 hours. Andreas Höglund also confirmed using Mlucas running on an Amazon AWS instance in 65 hours.
Jonathan Pace is a 51-year old Electrical Engineer living in Germantown, Tennessee. Perseverance has finally paid off for Jon - he has been hunting for big primes with GIMPS for over 14 years. The discovery is eligible for a $3,000 GIMPS research discovery award.
I once had Pi (π) memorized to 200 decimal places, but that has fallen to only 120 digits. What mathematical/numerical oddity/skill do you have?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday January 05 2018, @09:10AM (1 child)
Number theory - of which primes are an important component - is fun. Pi to 200 digits? No, sorry, only 45.
I participate in the international math-and-logic games. This is international, run in four rounds: qualifier, local quarter-finals, national semi-finals, and international finals in Paris. Although you can take part in almost any language (the problems are translated), the competition is originally French. Which means, typical France, the organizers cannot be bothered with a decent internet presence in other languages. Actually, even in French, the online info sucks. But the competition is fun, the problems are fun, and you meet like-minded math nuts along the way. FWIW, here's the Swiss site (German/French), [www.fsjm.ch] and the Canadian site [ulaval.ca].
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:30AM
Number theory is to STEM college students as basic algebra is to Black high-schoolers, utterly a waste of time to all but the 1% who will actually use it later in life.
More colleges need to have 2 different courses of undergrad discrete math -- one for people who give a flying fuck about bullshit like proofs and set theory, and one for people who want to learn practical skills.