>>>Has the prime number that was found a week ago been announced on
>>>this list?
>>>I.E. What number was it?
>>It hasn't been announced yet... but from what little information
>>that is available, i.e. The Oregonian newspaper article, the
>>exponent must be =at least= 6,643,859.
>>Eric
>Eric: Isn't 7 million bits something very near to 2^7,000,00 ?
>I think that could be the case. So could we say: exponent at least >6,900,000?
>Rudy
>From the "The Oregonian" article:
>The new number is 7 million bits of information -- or more than
>twice as long.
Good point. But 7,000,000 bits =is= 2^7,000,000 - 1 (which is
obviously a composite number)
I was looking at the following portion of the article...
'Confirmed this week by George Woltman, a Florida engineer and
founder of the "Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search," the new
prime possesses more than 2 million digits -- more than twice as
many as the previously largest-known prime, which was discovered
last year by a 19-year-old college student.'
<pardon the sarcasm!>
Whatever the case, certain individuals who have decided to "poach"
exponents to ensure M(36) and M(37) are actually M(36) and M(37)
respectively, are going to have to wait a loooong time to verify
whether this new find is actually M(38) or really M(39), etc.
instead. Guess they better get out those Pentium XV 1000GHz
processors we heard about earlier. They'll need them to process
the well over 35,000 LL tests (including double-checks) to
accomplish this task!!!
<ending sarcasm mode>
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