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New Largest Prime

posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 23, @09:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the 2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23-29-... dept.

looorg writes:

https://www.mersenne.org/primes/?press=M136279841

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 2136,279,841-1, having 41,024,320 decimal digits. Luke Durant, from San Jose, California, found the prime on October 12th.

The new prime number, also known as M136279841, is calculated by multiplying together 136,279,841 twos, and then subtracting 1. It is over 16 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 52nd known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly more 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 18 Mersenne primes. Volunteers download a free program to search for these primes, with a $3000 award offered to anyone lucky enough to find a new prime. Prof. Chris Caldwell founded an authoritative web site on the largest known primes which is now maintained by volunteers, and has an excellent history of Mersenne primes.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Friday October 25, @10:16AM (1 child)

    by pTamok (3042) on Friday October 25, @10:16AM (#1378597)

    I can use < angle brackets > in the text just fine.

    To write a less than symbol (<) write: &lt;

    To write a greater than symbol (>) write: &gt;

    To write an ampersand character that does NOT have any other significant meaning, write: &amp;

    It is left as an exercise for the reader how I wrote this post.

    The problem comes when you want to copy and paste text in comments, if, for example, you want to quote something,

    In order to quote you, I had to go back and edit the quote. If I hadn't, it would have looked quite different on publication (you can check with 'Preview', as the system then interprets the characters. Using Unicode lookalikes allows you to quote without needing to go back and edit.

    Here is what your text looks like when copied and pasted into a quote without re-editing. Do you see the problems it generates?

    I can use in the text just fine.

    To write a less than symbol () write: >

    To write an ampersand character that does NOT have any other significant meaning, write: &

    It is left as an exercise for the reader how I wrote this post.

    But thank-you for the comment.

    When

    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Interesting=1, Total=1
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday October 25, @01:37PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25, @01:37PM (#1378608) Journal

    You do identify a real problem. With my approach, copy-pasta characters seem to disappear into nothingness. In reality they seep into the groundwater and surrounding environment. Using Unicode characters would avoid that problem.

    --
    Santa/Satan maintains a database and does double verification of it.