After further analysis, the field of suspects has been narrowed to 55. Only two possibilities are below M40 but above M39; all of the others are under M39.

Now let's see if I can get some more info from George. :wink:

Two questions:
1. Is the discoverer a team?
2. Is it a first-time test or a double-check?

I don't see why everyone expects the number to be so small. From the email announcement: "If proven correct, this will be the new largest known prime."

[QUOTE=aaronl]I don't see why everyone expects the number to be so small. From the email announcement: "If proven correct, this will be the new largest known prime."[/QUOTE]

What e-mail announcement? Based on cleared.txt from 1500 UTC on 5/15/04 no exponents larger than M40 have been returned since the day began (based on PrimeNet's UTC time).

[quote]
From: George Woltman <woltman@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 11:42:54 -0400
To: [email]prime@hogranch.com[/email]
Subject: [Prime] 41st Mersenne Prime reported!
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1

Hi all,

A computer has just reported discovering the 41st known Mersenne Prime!!
If proven correct, this will be the new largest known prime.

The test was run using version 23 with its better false-positive screening.
I've emailed the user and asked for a copy of the save file with a few
thousand iterations left to go. If he emails that file to me and re-running
the last iterations again shows the number to be prime, then we will
know the report is accurate.

I'll keep you posted,
George
[/quote]

:furious: :censored: It seems Excel has a problem with large text imports. In any case, I'll be redoing my analysis and posing here again soon.

A-ha! I KNEW I was off the first time! Seventy-THREE possibilities. After the inital round of cuts we now have (drumroll please) seventy-FOUR possibilities. (Notice how that's an inverted 47?)

Based on further analysis of program versions in use on each of the possible computers, I've narrowed the list of suspects, once again, to 55. Of the remaining 55, 13 are 33M exponents. So, George, it wouldn't hurt to tell us whether the exponent qualifies for the EFF prize or not. :wink:

Now, does anyone keep hourly copies of summary.txt so we can find out what hour the unverified appeared in?

How many people received the email?? I didn't recieve an email!!

Hmmm... based on the information available I narrowed down the info from cleared.txt to less than 20 exponents. One of them looks like a probable candidate to me ... and it isn't small. Here is a encrypted prediction: Ír½Mü¶ÞKøBCnXXQñ

Are you subscribed to the mailing list?

[QUOTE=dave_0273]How many people received the email?? I didn't recieve an email!![/QUOTE]
To receive these, you have to subscribe to the Mersenne Mailing List at [url="http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime"]http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime[/url].
There, you'll also find a link to the archive.

Benjamin