From caldwell@utm.EdU Tue Feb 3 20:27:48 1998 Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 12:53:38 -0500 From: Chris Caldwell To: NMBRTHRY@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU Subject: New Mersenne Prime Just in case you missed it 2^3021377 - 1 is prime! Note (2^3021377+1)/3 has the factor 2*15765*3021377+1 (Conrad Curry) so the "New Mersenne Conjecture" still holds. Chris. ===================================================================== Excerpt (by George Woltman) from The Mersenne Newsletter, issue #13 February 2, 1998 37th Known Mersenne Prime Discovered!!! --------------------------------------- Congratulations to Roland Clarkson. On January 27th he discovered that 2^3021377 - 1 is prime! This prime number is 909,526 digits long. The computation took 46 days part-time on his 200-MHz Pentium computer. David Slowinski confirmed the find on January 31st. Roland is a 19 year-old sophmore at California State University Dominguez Hills. He is the third youngest Mersenne prime discoverer - behind Noll and Nickel. Incredibly, this was only the 8th exponent he has tested! Unlike the previous GIMPS finds, Roland let the PrimeNet server (see Program News below) choose the lucky exponent. At first, he did not want to test the exponent. Roland said, "I never would have imagined two Mersenne primes would be so close together!". In fact, in percentage terms, the gap between the 36th and 37th Mersenne primes is the smallest ever. To acknowledge Scott Kurowski's work on the PrimeNet server and every GIMPS participants diligent work, official credit for this prime will go to "Clarkson, Woltman, Kurowski, et.al.". You can read the official press release at http://www.mersenne.org/3021377.htm and be sure to check out Chris Caldwell's web pages starting at http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/notes/3021377/ Chris K. Caldwell And there is salvation in no one else, Prof. Math/Comp. Sci. for there is no other name under heaven UT Martin, Martin TN 38238 given among men by which we must be http://www.utm.edu/~caldwell saved. (Acts 4:12)