What has the computing project the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search discovered?
A computer professional in Norway, with the help of an online computing project, has discovered a new Mersenne prime. This sought-after number represents the 47th Mersenne prime discovered since ancient Greek mathematicians first uncovered them. These primes are called the “jewels” of number theory, and it takes a huge computing system about two or three weeks to test a single number to see if it could lead to a Mersenne prime. For those of you for whom basic math is a distant memory, a reminder: Primes are numbers that are divisible by only the number 1 and themselves. So 2 is prime; so are 3, 5, 7 and so on. The year 2003 was a prime year, and 2011 will be as well. Sources: http://www.scpr.
