>From: Bryon Buck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Mersenne: GIMPS in Science News
>Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 00:01:53
>1. To the average person, aliens are a lot "sexier" than prime numbers.
>Anyone can picture little green men from Mars, but it takes a special
>person to apprecite what a prime number is, and especially prime numbers of
>the magnitude we deal with.
I do wonder whether /any/ people can really appreciate the size of numbers
with the magnitude of the Mersenne primes. Running down the list of known
ones: (? signifies that I'm not sure how to represent the number)
M(2) presents no problem
M(3) is about the limit of how high a typical person can count by sight,
i.e. without actually thinking in order of the names of numbers.
M(5) is in the range of the highest numbers we count to in day-to-day life.
M(7) is the highest Mersenne prime to which an average person has counted in
their life
M(13) approaches the number of letters it is possible to print visibly on
one piece of paper, and is the highest that a person could theoretically
count to in one sitting.
M(17) is the number of people that could fit into a /very/ large open arena
or stadium.
M(19) would take the better part of a month to count to.
M(31) exceeds the population of China, and is impossible to count to in a
person's lifetime. It is comparable to the number of heartbeats in a
lifetime, and compares favorably with the number of stars in the galaxy, and
is about a third of the world population.
M(61) is a decent approximation for the number of living cells on this
planet. It is a realistic upper limit on the amount of data that the world
will ever store.
M(89) ?
M(107) ?
M(127) is slightly less than the number of grams in the sun.
M(521) is far greater than the number of particles in our universe.
M(607)?
M(1279) ?
M(2203) is comparable to the number of text documents the length of this
email.
M(2281) ?
M(3217) ?
>From here on I have no clue how to proceed. "The number of atoms in the
universe to the power X" or "the number of possible N digit numbers" gives
little impression of the size of the number.
Regards, Nathan
P.S. If anyone wants to take a shot at the others, I left the rest of the
list of exponents in this email.
4253
9689
9941
11213
19937
21701
23209
44497
86243
110503
132049
216091
756839
859433
1257787
1398269
2976221
3021377
69725931
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