[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I was looking at the available ranges to test Mersenne primes and
I noticed the range included exponents which by definition cannot
yield primes.
The ranges listed at www.mersenne.org and PrimeNet are mostly meant to
include only prime exponents. The only exception I can think of at
the moment is the ECM (Elliptic Curve Method) factoring pages at
www.mersenne.org.
I looked at some Mersenne htmls and didn't see any mention of
even number exponents excluded from the search.
They (all composite exponents, actually) are excluded from the search
for Mersenne primes. No composite exponent Mersenne can be prime; see
my:
http://www.garlic.com/~wedgingt/mersenne.html
for a proof.
if the exponent, n, is an even number integer then 2^n is a square
and 2^n-1 is factorable by: ((2^n)1/2 -1) ((2^n)1/2 +1) = 2^n-1
Correct. See my recent message to this list titled 'Composite
exponent Mersenne numbers' for another factorization when n is an odd
multiple of four. I've added the appropriate references to the email
headers to make this easier once this message is archived.
My computer is a pentium 133, 64mb ram , 2gig hd, MS95, math
coprocessor. Could I contribute to the prime search?
Yes, both for a new Mersenne prime - which is what GIMPS is looking
for - and for new prime factors of smaller Mersenne numbers. There
are several programs for each that will run on your hardware and
operating system. For Mersenne prime hunting in particular, you want
George Woltman's prime95, at www.mersenne.org; it's easily the fastest
on Intel CPUs.
Will
