13 million-digit prime number
I was reading on the Yahoo news website that a new Mersenne prime number has been discovered by UCLA mathematicians last month. It has 13 million digits! They discovered the number by using a network of seventy five different computers running Windows XP. (Take THAT Vista!) (I don’t like Vista!)
The discovery makes them eligible for a $100,000 prize offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for finding the first Mersenne prime with more than 10 million digits. Good for them!
