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Can MMA confirm the 'Largest Prime'?

Is there any chance that a seriously interested (but still home based) person can use MMA to check the latest claimed, largest Mersenne prime? My machine just overheats?

POSTED BY: David Mackay
3 Replies

Sean, Sander,

Many thanks for the helpful feedback. I will certainly take a look at the video.

Cheers,

David

POSTED BY: David Mackay

Yes you can,

num = 2^74207281 - 1;
Do[If[Mod[num, n] == 0, Print["Fail"]; Abort[]], {n, 2, 
   Ceiling[Sqrt[num]], 2}];

leave that running for a while ;-) If you see a Fail, then it is not a prime...

In all seriousness, there are better (faster) ways of checking it. The above code takes forever. Have a look at this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEvXcTYqtKU

they explain a more reasonable way of checking... but still this takes a LONG time!!

POSTED BY: Sander Huisman

No. That number is enormous.

I mean you could. But it would be very difficult.

If I remember reading the article about it, it took them nearly a month of computing time on a grid of reasonably powerful machines to check.

POSTED BY: Sean Clarke
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