[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Missouri Researchers Find Largest Prime Number

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/01/03/ap2426573.html

Forbes.com
January 3, 2006

Associated Press

Update 1: Mo. Researchers Find Largest Prime Number

By GARANCE BURKE

Researchers at a Missouri university have identified the largest known 
prime number, officials said Tuesday.

The team at Central Missouri State University, led by associate dean 
Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, found it in 
mid-December after programming 700 computers years ago.

A prime number is a positive number divisible by only itself and 1 - 2, 3, 
5, 7 and so on.

The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a 
Mersenne prime known as M30402457 - that's 2 to the 30,402,457th power 
minus 1.

Mersenne primes are a special category expressed as 2 to the "p" power 
minus 1, in which "p" also is a prime number.

"We're super excited," said Boone, a chemistry professor. "We've been 
looking for such a number for a long time."

The discovery is affiliated with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, 
a global contest using volunteers who run software that searches for the 
largest Mersenne prime.


Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

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