- "ORLANDO, Florida, June 30, 1999 --
Nayan Hajratwala, a participant in the Great Internet
Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has discovered the
first known million-digit prime number using software
written by George Woltman and the
- distributed computing technology and
services of Scott Kurowski's company, Entropia.com,
Inc. The prime number: 26,972,593 -1, contains 2098960 digits
qualifying for the $50,000 award offered by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). An article is
being submitted to an academic journal for
consideration. The new prime number, discovered on
June 1st, is one of a special class of prime numbers
called Mersenne primes. This is only the 38th known
Mersenne prime. There is a well-known formula that
generates a "perfect" number from a Mersenne prime. A
perfect number is one whose factors add up to the
number itself. The smallest perfect number is 6 = 1 +
2 + 3. The newly discovered perfect number is
- 2^6972592 * (2^6972593-1)
- This
number is 4,197,919 digits long!"
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No
28
