On February 18, 2005, Dr. Martin Nowak from Germany, found the new largest known prime number, 2^25,964,951-1. The prime number has 7,816,230 digits.

It took more than 50 days of calculations on Dr. Nowak's 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 computer. The new prime was independently verified in five days by two reserachers in France and Spain.

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050227_133948.html

see the number in .txt here (56k warning - it is of size 7.7 MB) - http://www.mersenne.org/prime8.txt

Very Cool!

Lol, you can even order it on a poster

umm.. that hurts my head?

ok, now how willl that number help solve the problems of the word. or what will you actually DO with that number.

what will you actually DO with that number.

Scare you perhaps?

j/k....

I feel a new wave of PC benchmarking coming on

What are the prime numbers for? Is there a list?

I discovered a bigger number!!! take tht prime number and add 1 to it..and viola...a new record!!!!

@indianarchie

Nope.... that would make the number even, and thereby divisible by 2...

@rjz

In the field of mathematics, there are some theories that link prime numbers (or sequences of prime numbers) to universal constants (something like pi or e).

These universal constants may eventually be used for common day applications like pi and e are (pi = 3.14159.... e = 2.7182818.... both are irrational numbers).

@indianarchie

Nope.... that would make the number even, and thereby divisible by 2... newwink.gif

@zian..allrite..then i'll add 2 to it! then atleast it shud remain a prime:D

na, it would be yet divisible by some number.

On February 18, 2005, Dr. Martin Nowak from Germany, found the new largest known prime number, 2^25,964,951-1. The prime number has 7,816,230 digits.

I love maths and it comes at no surprise to me that this news comes from an Indian friend !!!

Recall having read something about the link of being raised in a culture with an intricated cosmology and politheism and the predisposition to maths and logic.

Must be true

Respect,

Bob