You all know about
Most of you are familiar with prime
Some of you remember being taught about prime
One or two of you play around with
All of you should be familiar with prime numbers -- you remember, numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves, such as 2 and 3 and 5 (come on, you know it's back there somewhere in that mass of goop called your brain, at least, maybe the part that hasn't been cooked by cell phone microwaves) and 11, too.
Anyway, some mathematicians are into prime numbers. At UCLA, Edson Smith (yes, that's his actual name -- he's a fucking math geek, people!), leader of a pack of math geeks, has discovered that largest prime number yet. The number is almost 13 million digits long. If you multiply 2 (you know, 2x2 = 4, 4x2 = 8, etc.) 43,112,609 times and then subtract 1 from that number, you have the answer.
It'll take a while; so, set aside a few centuries.
They are hard at work, looking for the next one.
Posted by Bill at September 28, 2008 07:09 PMWell, it's nice to have something to do. An idle mind is the devil's litterbox, or something.
Posted by: Kyle at September 29, 2008 02:27 AM