12-million-digit prime number revealed
A record breaking 12-million-digit prime number has been revealed, winning it's number-loving finders a prize of $100,000.The giant number - which can be written as 2 to the power of 43,112,609, minus 1 - was discovered by PrimeNet, a worldwide project where volunteers share computing power to hunt for Mersenne primes.
As a result they will get the $100,000 offered as a prize by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for finding a prime number of over 10 million digits.
Obviously you know this but for less numerate readers out there, a Mersenne number is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two staring with 1, 3, 7, 15 and 31.
"Thousands of people and organizations all over the world are part of GIMPS, and discovering this prime number shows how just powerful cooperative computing can be," said PrimeNet's creator, Scott Kurowski.
In case you want to get your calculators out, it is worth remembering that the first person or group who discovers a prime with at least 100 million digits gets $150,000 and there is $250,000 waiting for a prime with at least a billion digits.
LINKS
Electronic Frontier Foundation
In case you want to get your calculators out, it is worth remembering that the first person or group who discovers a prime with at least 100 million digits gets $150,000 and there is $250,000 waiting for a prime with at least a billion digits.
LINKS
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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