Tuesday, September 16, 2008

12 978 189

12978189 = 32 x 72 x 29429.

12978189 has a representation as a sum of two squares: 12978189 = 4832 + 35702.

12 978 189 is the number of decimal digits in the world’s largest known prime number, discovered on a UCLA computer on Aug. 23, 2008, as part of a 12-year-old, worldwide computing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS).

This number is the 45th known Mersenne prime, 243112609 – 1.
Marin Mersenne (1588–1648)

Source: Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Image: Courtesy of Loci: Convergence
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2 comments:

  1. BruceSeptember 16, 2008 at 1:54 PM

    This number, however, is not a prime. Its prime factorization is 3^2 * 7^2 * 29429.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MunroSeptember 16, 2008 at 11:38 PM

    The number 12,978,189 is not prime, but they didn't say it was. 12,978,189 is the number of digits in the largest prime number found.

    ReplyDelete