Largest Known Prime Number Discovered!

Other scientific, philosophical, mathematical etc. topics go here.

Largest Known Prime Number Discovered!

Postby jinydu » Sun Feb 27, 2005 2:45 am

jinydu
Tetronian
 
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:31 am

Postby houserichichi » Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:33 am

It's so frustrating when you work through an entire GIMPS project only to find out it's not prime. Good on him for finding it though - lucky bastard! :cry:
houserichichi
Tetronian
 
Posts: 590
Joined: Wed May 12, 2004 1:03 am
Location: Canada

Postby jinydu » Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:45 am

You've been in GIMPS before?

Currently, I'm in the top 1000 and I've tested 85 exponents, none of which were prime (of course). In fact, the computer I'm using to type this message now is running Prime95.
jinydu
Tetronian
 
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:31 am

Postby houserichichi » Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:19 am

I've been on GIMPS now for a year or two I think? Maybe longer, I have no idea anymore! I take turns now between Einstein@home and GIMPS - one day at a time. That way I (feel as though I'm) getting the most power out of my puter. :wink:
houserichichi
Tetronian
 
Posts: 590
Joined: Wed May 12, 2004 1:03 am
Location: Canada

Postby RQ » Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:11 am

I downloaded Prime95 from mersenne.org but I mean I don't know what it's doing. It just says that it's testing the number M21191857 at iteration 101243 and chance of it being a Mersenne prime is 1 in 120,000. What does that mean?
RQ
Tetronian
 
Posts: 432
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2003 5:07 pm
Location: Studio City, California

Postby jinydu » Tue Mar 01, 2005 7:58 am

Welcome to GIMPS, RQ

RQ wrote:I downloaded Prime95 from mersenne.org but I mean I don't know what it's doing. It just says that it's testing the number M21191857 at iteration 101243 and chance of it being a Mersenne prime is 1 in 120,000. What does that mean?


Your computer is attempting to determine whether

(2^21191857) - 1

is prime or not. In order to do this, it must do reach iteration #21191857. At the end of the test, your computer will send its result to the Primenet server, which will then record the result and give credt to your account. Then, your computer will begin working on a new exponent.

As for the "1 in 120,000" change, that is a guess at how likely it is that the number you're testing actually is prime.
jinydu
Tetronian
 
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:31 am

Postby faranya » Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:50 am

I havn't really worked on prime numbers(ever), but is there a pattern to the increasements of prime numbers?
faranya
Dionian
 
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:58 pm

Postby pat » Thu Oct 27, 2005 5:55 am

If the Riemann Hypothesis is true (it's probably not false...), then there is a very precise "pattern" in a sense. But, it is not a pattern that anyone has been able to "shortcut". It's not a simple pattern that repeats over and over or anything like that.
pat
Tetronian
 
Posts: 563
Joined: Tue Dec 02, 2003 5:30 pm
Location: Minneapolis, MN

Postby jinydu » Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:51 am

faranya wrote:I havn't really worked on prime numbers(ever), but is there a pattern to the increasements of prime numbers?


Depends what you mean by "pattern". In mathematics, we like to focus on precise statements.

It is known that primes tend to get rarer as you get to larger and larger natural numbers. The Prime Number Theorem (which was proven about a century ago) showed that asymptotically, the number of primes less than N is approximately N/log(N), where log is the natural logarithm.

For more information, you can try searching for "prime" on any major math website; you will no doubt find a very large number of results.

(No new primes from GIMPS since the start of this thread)
jinydu
Tetronian
 
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:31 am

Postby PWrong » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:41 pm

Have a look at this applet. http://www.math.ubc.ca/~pugh/Psi/

Just press play, and watch the line. It jumps at every power of a prime number, i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11...

That's about as close as you can get to a formula for prime numbers. The actual formula is based on the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function.

If the Riemann Hypothesis is true (it's probably not false...)

We'll know for sure when I prove it :wink:
User avatar
PWrong
Pentonian
 
Posts: 1599
Joined: Fri Jan 30, 2004 8:21 am
Location: Perth, Australia

Postby Keiji » Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:53 pm

PWrong wrote:Have a look at this applet. http://www.math.ubc.ca/~pugh/Psi/

Just press play, and watch the line. It jumps at every power of a prime number, i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11...


That's a nice program for calculating primes... even though the text on that page is way beyond me :D
User avatar
Keiji
Administrator
 
Posts: 1985
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2003 6:33 pm
Location: Torquay, England

Postby jinydu » Tue Dec 27, 2005 1:13 pm

Another new prime has been found: 2^30402457 - 1

http://www.mersenne.org

(although that page is sometimes down)
jinydu
Tetronian
 
Posts: 721
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:31 am


Return to General

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

cron