NEW Prime Numbernfeese |
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Math   Location: IAKSS | My ultimate dream is that when one of these numbers is discovered in the future, the announcement won't have to be prefaced with the definition of a prime number. (For example, when a new word is coined, the definition doesn't begin..."The alphabet consists of 26 letters that when put in combinations.....") Meanwhile, bake a cake, light the candles, play some loud and rowdy music and CELEBRATE the beauty of numbers and mathematics! Mo. Researchers Find Largest Prime Number By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer Tue Jan 3, 10:09 PM KANSAS CITY, Mo. - 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. | ||
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| Math Posts: 104 Location: Henry Clay | Cool. There was an episode of Numbers that centered around the theft of a formula to generate prime numbers. The prime numbers were used as the key to uncode encrypted data that was being sent over the internet. The episode did a pretty nice job of talking about primes and of presenting this "real world" use of them. | ||
