Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The biggest yet found prime number

New Scientist: It’s time for a new prime to shine. The largest known prime number is now 274,207,281 – 1, smashing the previous record by nearly 5 million digits.

This mathematical monster was discovered by Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a collaborative effort to find new primes by pooling computing power online. It has 22,338,618 digits in total.

The GIMPS software automatically crunches through numbers, testing whether they are prime – that is, only divisible by themselves and one...

The prime numbers are infinite, and there is little practical use in discovering one, but the search is a good way to put computing hardware through its paces. Unrelated to the discovery of the new prime, GIMPS recently helped discover a bug in Intel’s new Skylake processors, which were crashing under the heavy workload.

10 comments:

bagoh20 said...

" there is little practical use in discovering one, but the search is a good way to put computing hardware through its paces."

Then do something else with it. I mean you're supposed to be smart guys, right? Then use your brain and think of something useful, and stop masturbating. It not like there are no problems left to solve. Maybe some mathematical analysis to ferret out voter fraud, or a fail proof way to prevent hacking or identity theft on computers, or how about some male contraception that isn't from the middle ages.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

It has 22,338,618 digits in total.

Cannot comprehend. It's like the universe.

ricpic said...

Cannot comprehend. It's like the universe.

Some of you know about this stuff so I have to ask: are there billions of stars in the universe or are there billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each gaaxy? Losing sleep over this one so I NEED YOUR HELP!

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

It's even more that that. Billions is just a word we use. I know -I'm smartzez.

Methadras said...

Math Porn.

Methadras said...

Ric, The Milky Way Galaxy for example has an estimated 100 billion stars. It is of average size for a galaxy that spans 100k light years across. On average, there is an estimated minimum of 100 billion galaxies with that number probably near 500 billion to 750 billion if not more. So even a minimum of 100 billion galaxies each containing approximately 100 billions stars, is a lot of stars. And that's just in the observable universe.

bagoh20 said...

Then we have to add in all the parallel universi. Some say it's an amazing number - just yuuuuge!

Methadras said...

Parallel universes are just remote fantasy. We can't even discern in infinitesimal fraction of the one we live in much less worry about other ones. Plus there are other issues with the parallel universe theory. Where do they exist? What is between them seperating our universe from their universe? Is there any bleed through? Things like that.

bagoh20 said...

"Where do they exist? What is between them seperating our universe from their universe? Is there any bleed through?"

"Where", "between", "separating", and "through" are all useless concepts in the 11 dimensions of M-theory, which is short for "Mary Jane driven theory". The answers are out there.........somewhere in Colorado.

Methadras said...

bagoh20 said...

"Where do they exist? What is between them seperating our universe from their universe? Is there any bleed through?"

"Where", "between", "separating", and "through" are all useless concepts in the 11 dimensions of M-theory, which is short for "Mary Jane driven theory". The answers are out there.........somewhere in Colorado.


Lulz, and chip might have them too. Meh, M-Theory or String Theory is another pipe dream idea that tries to find 'elegance' in a chaotic sea of particles. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the speed of gravity. The postulate that gravity may actually vastly exceed Einsteins observations in General Relativity. In that gravity is the weakest of all the three or four forces, it has a vast reach across galaxies. How other galaxies are attracted to each other is still a mystery, however, Dark Matter may be the missing link.