DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- More than 200,000 computers spent years looking for the largest known prime number. It turned up on Michigan State University graduate student Michael Shafer's off-the-shelf PC."It was just a matter of time," Shafer said.
The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number.
Anyone who knows me knows I couldn't care any less about this news, but it reminds me of a funny thing that happened recently. Greg and I were sitting at a co-worker and friend of Greg's wedding a few weeks ago. We were strategically placed at the same table as the groom's Ph.D professor from University of MD,who happens to be a pretty big name in the computer science world, and his equally smart math professor wife. (As you can all guess, this means nothing to me, but he thought Greg would like that).
Anyway, at one point when we are all making inane small talk as strangers often do, this computer science prof.'s wife turns to the table and says, "we just read the most lovely book about the square root of negative 15," and her husband nodded in agreement. I did all I could not to laugh out loud.
So the lesson here is, even though I don't think that there is any significance to the fact that the hightest prime number has been discovered, there are other people probably peeing in their pants now about this news. Party On!!!
Posted by peninah at December 11, 2003 10:43 PMThere is no 'highest' prime number. This is the highest identified to date. If one were to take a string of all of the prime numbers discovered to date, multiply them together, and add one, one would have another prime number, precluding the possibility of a highest prime number.
Gotta go change my pants.
Posted by: Fred Savage at December 12, 2003 08:54 AMThat is true, Fred, but how come they haven't found the next highest prime. You would think it would be as simple as going through the algorithm. Maybe it just takes time, and lots of computational cycles.
Posted by: Greg Greshman at December 12, 2003 09:07 AMblah blah blah blah blah. You math people make me nervous.
Posted by: peninah at December 12, 2003 12:04 PMThe algorithm dows not produce the next-highest prime number - it produces another prime number, but there may be one or several in between. And as you supposed, multiplying big numbers takes some time.
This stuff is critical for finding out where Osama bin Laden is hanging out, or trying to understand why people watch reality tv.
Posted by: Logan at December 12, 2003 01:39 PM1.wolverine/fred: I think you are jealous of this shafer dude
2.We watch reality TV to remind ourselves that while it is loserish that we watch, we are not loserish enough to actually be contestants.