American Mathematical Society: [url]http://ams.org/news?news_id=2939[/url]

[QUOTE=lavalamp;423113]Suppose a user sets their PC running a test, but then dies before it finishes. After some time (a day, a week?) the PC finishes the test finding a prime. An email is auto-sent out and George reads it. Who discovered the prime? Can you discover something posthumously?

Now suppose instead that the computer was shut down before completing the test when the body is discovered, but then someone later turned it on again and it proceeded to finish the test. Now who discovered the prime?

Now suppose that there's a family on the train tracks, and the only way to stop the train from hitting them is to discover a mersenne prime...[/QUOTE]

pure board gold :D

[QUOTE=ixfd64;423115]American Mathematical Society: [url]http://ams.org/news?news_id=2939[/url][/QUOTE]

somebody might want to tell them it doesn't have 22 trillion digits.

[QUOTE]and has more than 22,000,000 million digits.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=science_man_88;423117]somebody might want to tell them it doesn't have 22 trillion digits.[/QUOTE]I used a 'Contact Us' form to let them know.

It's currently in the slashdot firehose as red, so it might be hitting the front page soon.

The exponent status needs to be updated so that it is marked as prime: [url]http://mersenne.org/report_exponent/?exp_lo=74207281[/url]

[QUOTE=ixfd64;423122]The exponent status needs to be updated so that it is marked as prime: [URL]http://mersenne.org/report_exponent/?exp_lo=74207281[/URL][/QUOTE]

It was marked Prime when I looked about an hour ago. I called it up in hopes of finding I had done some of the factoring, but alas, that is not the case. :down:

[QUOTE=kladner;423124]It was marked Prime when I looked about an hour ago. I called it up in hopes of finding I had done some of the factoring, but alas, that is not the case. :down:[/QUOTE]
Just note that, for some reason, you have to check "Show full details" to see all the trial factoring history and the like. And as for being marked Prime, I think they meant the Status, which still reads "No factors below 2[SUP]75[/SUP]". Well, we now know that there are no factors below about 1.41 * 2[SUP]37103640[/SUP]!

[QUOTE=CuriousKit;423126] Well, we now know that there are no factors below about 1.41 * 2[SUP]37103640[/SUP]![/QUOTE]

we know there's no factors below the mersenne number itself if you want to get technical.

Well, yes. I was just teasing and going up to the square root of the Mersenne number!

[QUOTE=ixfd64;423122]The exponent status needs to be updated so that it is marked as prime: [url]http://mersenne.org/report_exponent/?exp_lo=74207281[/url][/QUOTE]

Fixed, thanks.