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Mo. Researchers Find Largest Prime Number
Yahoo!News ^ | January 4, 2006 | GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer

Posted on 01/04/2006 12:34:38 PM PST by mlc9852

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Researchers at a Missouri university have identified the largest known prime number, officials said Tuesday.

The team at Central Missouri State University, led by associate dean Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, found it in mid-December after programming 700 computers years ago.

A prime number is a positive number divisible by only itself and 1 — 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on.

The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a Mersenne prime known as M30402457 — that's 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1.

Mersenne primes are a special category expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, in which "p" also is a prime number.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; US: Missouri
KEYWORDS: bigdamnnumber; eternalvirgins; math; nerds
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This doesn't mean anything to me but it certainly sounds interesting. I guess we do still have some smart people in the US!
1 posted on 01/04/2006 12:34:41 PM PST by mlc9852
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To: mlc9852

...interesting. I had believed in an infinite prime number and this discovery shakes my faith a bit.


2 posted on 01/04/2006 12:40:32 PM PST by meandog (FUDU)
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To: mlc9852

Please tell me tax $$ did not go into this.


3 posted on 01/04/2006 12:40:33 PM PST by Paloma_55 (Which part of "Common Sense" do you not understand???)
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To: AdmSmith

prime pong


4 posted on 01/04/2006 12:40:35 PM PST by nuconvert (No More Axis of Evil by Christmas ! TLR) [there's a lot of bad people in the pistachio business])
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To: mlc9852

I learned about prime numbers in high school, but never learned what they are used for. Divisible only by itself and one, so what?

Can a FReeper math genius please tell us what you use a prime number for?


5 posted on 01/04/2006 12:41:21 PM PST by JimRed ("Hey, hey, Teddy K., how many girls did you drown today?")
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To: mlc9852

Why do they package food in prime number increments? I like to divide up the meal evenly and it messes me up. I hate prime numbers!


6 posted on 01/04/2006 12:41:26 PM PST by meowmeow (Meow! Meow!)
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To: mlc9852

Ehhh, big deal. My cat dialed that number last night.


7 posted on 01/04/2006 12:42:03 PM PST by Attention Surplus Disorder (Funny taglines are value plays.)
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To: mlc9852

> This doesn't mean anything to me but it certainly sounds interesting. I guess we do still have some smart people in the US!

Prime numbers are fascinating! True. Finding them (and factoring them to prove they are Prime) is, to some people, just as much fun as crossword puzzles. By definition, all prime numbers bar two are odd numbers (think about it!) To know that a certain number is only divisible by itself and one -- well, that's really cool. And the bigger the number, the rarer the Prime...

(alright, I confess. I have a Prime Number fetish...)


8 posted on 01/04/2006 12:43:22 PM PST by DieHard the Hunter (I am the Chieftain of my Clan. I bow to nobody. Get out of my way.)
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To: mlc9852

It also is the number value of the national debt.


9 posted on 01/04/2006 12:44:04 PM PST by TXBSAFH ("I would rather be a free man in my grave then living as a puppet or a slave." - Jimmy Cliff)
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To: JimRed
I learned about prime numbers in high school, but never learned what they are used for. Divisible only by itself and one, so what? Can a FReeper math genius please tell us what you use a prime number for?

For one thing, they're heavily used in cryptography, as well as many applications in computer programming and computer science. They're also at the heart of many mathematical proofs on other aspects of mathematics, etc.

10 posted on 01/04/2006 12:44:12 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: meandog
I had believed in an infinite prime numbe

Count all the even numbers to infinity. You will find there are more even numbers than even + odd numbers combined.

That should keep you busy for a bit.

11 posted on 01/04/2006 12:44:27 PM PST by Glenn (What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!)
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To: Paloma_55
"Please tell me tax $$ did not go into this."
Why? That five miles long number IS your tax bill.
12 posted on 01/04/2006 12:44:45 PM PST by GSlob
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To: mlc9852
Damn that Greenspan.

;-)

13 posted on 01/04/2006 12:45:13 PM PST by ItsForTheChildren
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To: JimRed
Geesh!

A prime number is necessary to receive signals from other dimensions so that we can build a machine to visit far away galaxies.

The movie Contact starring Jodie Foster told me. ;^)

14 posted on 01/04/2006 12:46:01 PM PST by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon)
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To: JimRed

Very large prime numbers are used to generate keys in encryption systems.


15 posted on 01/04/2006 12:46:15 PM PST by July 4th (A vacant lot cancelled out my vote for Bush.)
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To: Paloma_55

Modern cryptology, the mathematics that allows amongst other things, secure internet information transfers is dependent upon prime numbers.


16 posted on 01/04/2006 12:46:17 PM PST by FMBass (“Now that I’m sober I watch a lot of news” – Garofalo: From “Treason” by Coulter)
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To: Paloma_55
Please tell me tax $$ did not go into this.

Prime numbers are used in data encryption algorithms. The larger the prime number you use, the more difficult it is to crack the encryption.

This discovery will actually have a tangible benefit to anybody whose financial data is kept by other people.

17 posted on 01/04/2006 12:47:53 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Islam Factoid:After forcing young girls to watch his men execute their fathers, Muhammad raped them.)
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To: mlc9852
Hold tight. If numbers tend towards infinity, then shouldn't there be a yet undiscovered prime number that's larger than this one?


Dittohead, Snow Flake, and Bushbot, so what of it?

18 posted on 01/04/2006 12:47:54 PM PST by rdb3 (This is a ch__ch. What's missing?)
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It's taking Mo. and Mo. researchers to find these larger prime numbers.


19 posted on 01/04/2006 12:48:19 PM PST by vollmond (Careful with that axe, Eugene!)
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To: FMBass

Corrrection: cryptography – I hate windows spell check! Sheesh!


20 posted on 01/04/2006 12:49:50 PM PST by FMBass (“Now that I’m sober I watch a lot of news” – Garofalo: From “Treason” by Coulter)
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