Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A New Prime Number

Math is in the news today!

A new prime number has been discovered by Odd Magnar Strindmo from Melhus, Norway. It is 13 million digits long, so I won't display it here. It is a Mersenne prime number which means it can be calculated from the equation:



where n is a prime number.

The calculation required a lot of computing power (because the values for n are so large) and was aided by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). People can download software onto their personal computers to help with the calculations.

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4 comments:

  1. JacquiJune 16, 2009 at 8:26 PM

    It's so good to have someone else around the math-less kidlit world who finds these things SO COOL!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ann FinkelsteinJune 17, 2009 at 6:13 AM

    Two scientist friends wondered aloud about the use of a new prime number. I explained that I needed a math-related post on my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NathanAugust 26, 2009 at 6:45 PM

    Dude I'm so glad this happened

    ReplyDelete
  4. NathanAugust 26, 2009 at 6:47 PM

    Dude I'm so glad this happened

    ReplyDelete

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