OP 31 October, 2024 - 08:17 AM
Overview of the Discovery
A man named Luke Durant spent $2 million to discover a new largest prime number.
The newly discovered prime number is 2136,279,841 - 1, which has 41,024,320 digits.
This number is classified as a Mersenne prime, which is a prime of the form (2^p - 1), where (p) is also a prime number.
Details of the Discovery
Mersenne Prime: The new prime is referred to as M136279841 and is the 52nd known Mersenne prime.
Previous Record: This new prime is over 16 million digits larger than the previous record holder.
Method of Discovery: Durant utilized a combination of thousands of GPUs across 24 data centers in 17 countries to perform the calculations necessary to find this prime.
Financial Aspects
Durant invested $2 million of his own money into the project, which included costs for hardware and cloud computing resources.
For discovering a new Mersenne prime, there is a $3,000 prize offered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), which Durant plans to donate to his former high school.
Technological Innovations
The discovery marks a shift from traditional personal computers to the use of cloud computing and GPUs, highlighting the advancements in technology that allow for such large computations.
The GIMPS project has been ongoing since 1996, and this discovery ends a 28-year period where ordinary personal computers were primarily used to find large primes.
Significance of Mersenne Primes
Mersenne primes are of interest in number theory and have applications in fields such as cryptography.
The newly discovered prime also generates a perfect number, which is a number that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.
Conclusion
Luke Durant's discovery not only sets a new record for the largest known prime number but also showcases the potential of modern computing resources in mathematical research. The investment, while substantial, has contributed to a significant advancement in the field of prime number discovery.
PS: fuck outta here nancy
A man named Luke Durant spent $2 million to discover a new largest prime number.
The newly discovered prime number is 2136,279,841 - 1, which has 41,024,320 digits.
This number is classified as a Mersenne prime, which is a prime of the form (2^p - 1), where (p) is also a prime number.
Details of the Discovery
Mersenne Prime: The new prime is referred to as M136279841 and is the 52nd known Mersenne prime.
Previous Record: This new prime is over 16 million digits larger than the previous record holder.
Method of Discovery: Durant utilized a combination of thousands of GPUs across 24 data centers in 17 countries to perform the calculations necessary to find this prime.
Financial Aspects
Durant invested $2 million of his own money into the project, which included costs for hardware and cloud computing resources.
For discovering a new Mersenne prime, there is a $3,000 prize offered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), which Durant plans to donate to his former high school.
Technological Innovations
The discovery marks a shift from traditional personal computers to the use of cloud computing and GPUs, highlighting the advancements in technology that allow for such large computations.
The GIMPS project has been ongoing since 1996, and this discovery ends a 28-year period where ordinary personal computers were primarily used to find large primes.
Significance of Mersenne Primes
Mersenne primes are of interest in number theory and have applications in fields such as cryptography.
The newly discovered prime also generates a perfect number, which is a number that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.
Conclusion
Luke Durant's discovery not only sets a new record for the largest known prime number but also showcases the potential of modern computing resources in mathematical research. The investment, while substantial, has contributed to a significant advancement in the field of prime number discovery.
PS: fuck outta here nancy