Well, there's still plenty of people who'll stick to it. There's a lot of hardcore GIMPSers who are more than willing to keep crunching numbers alive (some even willing to risk getting the FBI on their case) :)
Besides the "big ticket" things like finding the megadigit prime and a ten megadigit prime, there's still all the other work of testing all the exponents in between, confirming that Mersenne Prime XX is really the XXth prime (and we didn't just miss any in-between). There's the double-checking work, and I still think it's cool when I find a really big factor (anything over 80 bits is fun to find) of a Mersenne number. I'm sure a lot of folks would just give up, but personally, I'd contribute to some fund for a "prize" for the other Prime numbers we find along the way. Just my 2 cents worth. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:mersenne-invalid- > [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Torben Schl�ntz > Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 3:03 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Mersenne: What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10 > million+ digits which is prime? > > What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10 million+ digits which > is prime? > > Will everybody just leave the project because there is no prize to gain > any longer? > > After the introduction of "search for 10 million digits number" this > could leave the project with quite a big hole, say from M14.xxx.xxx and > up till the exponent found. > > It will be kind of difficult to find new volunteers that will use time > and electricity to fill the hole if nothing more than glory is won. > > Will there be an other prize? > Will there be a new goal? > > We have the 4 or 5 biggest primes, are anyone stressing us by using > another algorithm like the LL, have access to more CPU, working on a > bulletproof method of generating new primes? > > br > tsc > > ________________________________________________________________________ _ > Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm > Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
