[ExI] mersenne primes again

[spike]

Non-math fans, do hit the delete key quickly, thanks.
 
If you wonder what is making Mersenne prime people crazy as hell these days,
consider this graph.  On the horizontal is the sequential number of the
Mersenne prime; observe there are 47 known now.  On the vertical is the
natural log of the exponent: the first Mersenne prime is 2^2-1 so the first
y is ln(2) or about 0.693, the second is 2^3-1, so ln(3) etc.  
 
The more or less log-linear relationship held for over 500 years, then in
2003 for some very odd reason which is still way beyond my (or anyone
else's) ability to explain, the last 8 of the known Mersennes clustered,
they went off on a completely new trajectory.  Isn't nature weird?
 
 

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