New Mersenne prime, for real this time!

GIMPS has just announced today that they have indeed found a new Mersenne prime!

M32582657 = 2^{32,582,657} - 1

Obviously I can’t print the whole thing here, but I can tell you that the first 50 digits are 12457502601536945540085550157479950312279598515115, and the last 50 digits are 212445737104635692000092659011752880154053967871. This is now the largest known prime number, breaking the previous record set in December 2005. (Of course there are larger prime numbers — there are infinitely many — but this is the largest number that we can actually point to and say, “this number is prime.”) You can download it here. You can even order a poster of it! (It’s pretty expensive though, since it’s very difficult to print digits tiny enough to make the whole number fit on a poster.)

Unfortunately, at 9,808,358 digits, it’s just shy of the ten million digits needed to claim the $100,000 prize offered by the EFF. But it’s still pretty exciting.

More information can be found in my previous post.

About Brent

Associate Professor of Computer Science at Hendrix College. Functional programmer, mathematician, teacher, pianist, follower of Jesus.
This entry was posted in links, primes. Bookmark the permalink.