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[plandon]

Originally Posted by 10metreh

The reason I'm calling it M46 is because M43112609 was the 45th Mersenne discovered, but it was often referred to as M46 because it was the 46th in size order.

There's another ambiguity there.
Is M43112609 the 43112609th Mersenne Prime discovered?

I like M(x) to mean 2^x-1

[Primeinator]

I agree, Plandon. I take M47 to mean the 47th Mersenne prime by size. This of course would be adjusted as needed in the event of smaller Mersennes being found. If not by size, then an indicator should be given such as the 47th Mersenne prime by date of discovery. I take M(48037183) to mean 2^48037183 -1.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by Mini-Geek

It's a bit like this: stigmv uncovered a diamond (i.e. Mersenne prime) in a big field (i.e. the many possible candidates) and both he and the automated diamond-searcher (i.e. the email system to George) didn't notice it, and eventually Lycorn noticed it.

I'd think that some amount of credit should go to each of them. But then wouldn't that mean that in a normal situation George or Scott should get credit for the discovery of a Mersenne prime if they happen to see the e-mail before anyone else? Likewise, if it was automatically posted to a very visible location the web site, (like a new article on the front page) would the first person that happens to see it be the discoverer?

To relate it to the Hurwitz situation: if a janitor had happened to read "M4253 is prime!" (or whatever the output was, and assuming that he could understand the output) before Hurwitz saw "M4423 is prime!" would M4253 be "discovered" before M4423? If so, shouldn't the "discoverer" be the janitor, even though he wasn't the one that actually wrote the program or set the computer to run it, or anything?

If a prime falls in the woods but nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound? er...Say a computer running Prime95 finds a prime with the owner watching, so he knows right away, but before either the computer or the owner can communicate that to anyone/anything (e.g. PrimeNet), something happens (flaming meteor crashes through the window?) and the owner is killed and the hard drive disk containing this information is in a very bad shape. Say it can still be read by a professional data recovery crew, (hey, they recovered Space Shuttle Columbia's data) and they find "Mxxx IS A NEW MERSENNE PRIME!!!" in the Prime95 log files. Who is the discoverer?

What if you think the 48th Mersenne prime to be discovered will be smaller than M43112609? Then we don't exactly all agree.

THX for this great response.

The question posed by the Hurwitz analogy is "when?" rather than "who?"
made the discovery. The vagueness of "who" is catered for by the
familiar attribution "Odd, George, Scott et al" aka GIMPS.

I would say the tree that fell in the wood made a sound as soon as
it finished its test and wrote it to the results file (April 12th).

The 48th Mprime to be discovered may (highly likely) be less
than M47(?) but that merely emphasizes that "Predict M48"
is interpreted as the next to be discovered.

David

[10metreh]

Generally there is no ambiguity with whether Mx means 2^x-1 or the xth Mersenne prime, because, in the case of the former, x will probably be too big for the latter to have been found.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by 10metreh

Generally there is no ambiguity with whether Mx means 2^x-1 or the xth Mersenne prime, because, in the case of the former, x will probably be too big for the latter to have been found.

I agree. Even if I say M31, I expect people to know what I'm talking
about, assuming I have made it clear whether it's Euler or
Colquitt/Welsh (aka M29) I'm referring to.