Largest prime number ever is found
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438
Largest prime number ever is found
15:11 02 December 03
NewScientist.com news service
A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number.
The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers.
Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University used his office computer to contribute spare processing power to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has more than 60,000 volunteers from all over the world taking part.
"I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer had found the new prime," Shafer says. "After a short victory dance, I called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share the great news."
Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided by themselves and one. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type of prime that take the form 2 p-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number can be represented as 220,996,011-1. It is only the 40th Mersenne prime to have ever been found.
Building blocks
Mersenne primes were first discussed by Euclid in 350 BC and have been central to the branch of mathematics known as number theory ever since. They are named after a 17th century French monk who first came up with an important conjecture about which values of p would yield a prime.
Primes are the building blocks of all positive numbers. They have practical uses too, for example by providing a way of exchanging the cryptographic keys that keep internet communications secure from eavesdropping. However, despite their significance, mathematicians do not understand the way prime numbers are distributed making it very difficult to identify new primes.
Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at Oxford University and author of The Music of the Primes, says the discovery is unlikely to add much to our understanding of the way primes are distributed but is still significant.
"It's a really good measure of what our computational capabilities are," he told New Scientist. "It's a really fun project. Everyone gets a different bit of the number universe to look at. It's a bit like the lottery."
The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service
Largest prime number ever is found
15:11 02 December 03
NewScientist.com news service
A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number.
The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers.
Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University used his office computer to contribute spare processing power to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has more than 60,000 volunteers from all over the world taking part.
"I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer had found the new prime," Shafer says. "After a short victory dance, I called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share the great news."
Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided by themselves and one. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type of prime that take the form 2 p-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number can be represented as 220,996,011-1. It is only the 40th Mersenne prime to have ever been found.
Building blocks
Mersenne primes were first discussed by Euclid in 350 BC and have been central to the branch of mathematics known as number theory ever since. They are named after a 17th century French monk who first came up with an important conjecture about which values of p would yield a prime.
Primes are the building blocks of all positive numbers. They have practical uses too, for example by providing a way of exchanging the cryptographic keys that keep internet communications secure from eavesdropping. However, despite their significance, mathematicians do not understand the way prime numbers are distributed making it very difficult to identify new primes.
Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at Oxford University and author of The Music of the Primes, says the discovery is unlikely to add much to our understanding of the way primes are distributed but is still significant.
"It's a really good measure of what our computational capabilities are," he told New Scientist. "It's a really fun project. Everyone gets a different bit of the number universe to look at. It's a bit like the lottery."
Mathematical curiosity
The GIMPS project uses a central computer server and free software to coordinate the activity of all its contributors. Contributing machines are each allocated different prime number candidates to test.
Some people contribute to GIMPS out of mathematical curiosity or to test their computer hardware, while others just hope to go down in history as the discoverer of a massive prime. There is also a financial incentive with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit US group, offering a $100,000 prize for the discovery of the first prime with 10 million digits.
Shafer's discovery was made on 17 November but it was not independently verified until now. "It's humbling to see so many people of varied lands, ages and vocations volunteering for this fun and amazing project," says Scott Kurowski, whose company Entropia manages the GIMPS server.
"There are more primes out there," adds George Woltman, who started the GIMPS project in 1996. "And anyone with an internet-connected computer can participate."
Will Knight
问题点数：100、回复次数：7Top
1 楼djniulihao（daniu）回复于 2003-12-03 08:16:57 得分 20
呵呵，关注Top
2 楼BlueSky2008（懒惰是程序员的美德）回复于 2003-12-03 22:36:06 得分 20
UP.希望多看到一些这样的贴子。Top
3 楼cai114（硬鸡常空（KingKong归来））回复于 2003-12-04 12:02:55 得分 20
真的不错！
UPTop
4 楼NowCan（城市浪人）回复于 2003-12-04 17:54:01 得分 10
厉害。
GIMPS，我以前加入过，分布式运算，利用互联网上的计算机的空闲时间来进行计算。当然，对计算机的要求还不低，程序一开始要进行计算机测试。
不知道素数验证是怎么做成并行运算的。Top
5 楼kbsoft（让世界充满爱!）回复于 2003-12-04 18:08:51 得分 20
GoodTop
6 楼microblue（）回复于 2003-12-17 21:23:38 得分 0
to: NowCan(能量、激情、雨水、彩虹——雷雨云)
> 不知道素数验证是怎么做成并行运算的。
GIMPS 只是将不同的指数分配给不同的计算机测试, 对同一个指数的素数性验证并没有进行并行运算.Top
7 楼NowCan（城市浪人）回复于 2003-12-18 12:54:36 得分 10
谢谢，我到他网站上看到了那个算法。Top
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