With mind-blowingly prodigious numbers involved on both sides of the equation, the largest known prime number was discovered on Friday, January 25th. The interconnected computer system that found the number, known as GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), involves no less than 360,000 CPUs running at heights of 150 trillion calculations per second for the last seventeen years.
By having worked for this lengthy duration, the GIMPS thusly breaks a second record: That for the longest continuous "grassroots supercomputing" project in Internet history.
The prime number itself, 257,885,161-1 (2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times, less one) clocks in a number digit of 17,425,170, making this a noticeable triumph of a discovery over the previous record-holder (the 12,978,189 digit 242,643,801-1) found four years ago.
257,885,161-1 is the 14th of (now) 48 "Mersenne primes" to be discovered by the nearly two-decade-old GIMPS system and the third by Dr. Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri. Although it was indeed Dr. Cooper's computer that found the multiple record-breaking prime, GIMPS founder George Woltman offered thanks to all of the volunteers concurrently contributing to the system.
GIMPS, originally developed by Woltman with the specific intent of finding the world's largest prime numbers, was improved upon by Scott Korawski one year later. It was Korawski's revision to the system that allowed GIMPS to "harness the power of hundreds of thousands of ordinary computers to search for these 'needles in a haystack,'" according to the GIMPS press release.
Although "most GIMPS members join the search for the thrill of possibly discovering a record-setting, rare, and historic new Mersenne prime," as of August 2008, Mersenne finders can receive grants from GIMPS for between $3000 and $5000 per discovery.
Prime numbers, such as 2; 3; 5; 7; 11; and 13, are those that are greater than 1 and have divisors only of 1 and themselves.
Though the concept of a Mersenne prime dates back to Euclid's time of 350 BC, the contemporary designation is only as old as its monk namesake - Marin Mersenne - who lived from 1588 to 1648.
The Mersenne prime concept itself is rather abstruse, but essentially, in order for Mp to be a Mersenne prime, the exponent p itself must be a prime number.
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