Big number

Computer Science Level 2

Is $\large 2^{74207281}-1$ a prime number?

Hint: GIMPS

Yes No

1 solution

Isaac Buckley
Jan 19, 2016

There is a new largest prime!

It was found on the 7th of January 2016.

See more about it here .

Hi Isaac, I have a question for you. Why was GIMPS initiated? We know about the infinitude of primes, so why search for larger ones?

Swapnil Das - 5 years, 4 months ago

I'm not sure what the original intention of the project was. I would guess it arose from people just trying to one up each other. Mathematicians and computer scientists occasionally just do things for fun.

Now there is a money prize awarded when a new prime is discovered.

If you discover a 100 million digit prime you will be awarded $50,000.

I'm not sure why companies like to invest so much money into it. I think it's because a useful way to test processors is to make them run these sorts of algorithms. I imagine the more we know about these sorts of algorithms the faster we can get a processor to compute things.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge on this topic can correct, confirm or add to what I've just said.

Isaac Buckley - 5 years, 4 months ago

All good points, and some others are provided here . As is more and more the case in mathematical research, theory and high-level computation inform each other, and the patterns found as a by-product of the search for larger and larger primes have led to new avenues of research.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump: "Math is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get." :)

Brian Charlesworth - 5 years, 4 months ago

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