[extropy-chat] new mersenne prime announced

[Spike]

Gimps has announced the latest Mersenne prime and new
record largest prime: 2^24036583-1.  {8-]  

http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

This is the ninth Mersenne prime discovered in 
the past decade.  The doubling time of the size
of the record largest known prime is given in
the table below:

 date discovered		doubling time (seconds)
01-Jul-94			615
03-Sep-96			172
13-Nov-96			44
24-Aug-97			16
27-Jan-98			298
01-Jun-99			11
14-Nov-01			12
17-Nov-03			8.4
15-May-04			5.1

5.1 second doubling time, this is a way cool trend as well.  {8-]

This new one has over 7.2 million decimal digits.  The 
next Mersenne prime will probably have over 10 million
decimal digits, so will bag the $100,000 EFF prize: 

http://www.eff.org/awards/coop.php

According to my estimates, this EFF prize should be claimed
within about two years.  If you join GIMPS and run Prime95 in
the background starting now, you have as much chance of claiming
that $100k as anyone else.  I have been running GIMPS in the 
background for nearly 6 years now, with no problems.  You can 
get the software here, its free:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm#download

Actually it isn't totally free to run the software: it costs
about a buck and a quarter a month in increased electricity 
usage to run GIMPS 24/7.

Should one of you get the $100k prize instead of me, I will 
not be angry.  (I might throw a minor tantrum and stamp my 
little footy, but Ill get over it.  {8^D)  The computer
which discovers the record itself becomes worth a fortune
as a museum piece, like a geek's version of record-breaking
homerun baseballs.  (Baseball fans, are the record-breaking
bats also worth a ton of money?)  And you get your name forever 
on the same short list with Cataldi, Euler, Lucas and several 
other math gods.

Aint it good to be living in the 21st century?  {8-]  spike