Gimps glory after prime number discovery

Gimps glory after prime number discovery

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Sunday, 28, Sep 2008 11:31

A prime number with 13 million digits has been discovered by Californian mathematicians after the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or Gimps.

A team from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) could be in line for a $100,000 (£54,000) prize after discovering the 46th known Mersenne prime number.

A Mersenne prime, named after 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne, is expressed as two to the power of p minus one, when p is itself a prime number.

Edson Smith, the leader of the winning UCLA team, was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying: "We're delighted. Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds."

The Gimps was set up the Electronic Frontier Foundation to promote co-operative computing on the internet.

The search saw thousands of internet users linking the unused power of their personal computers to find the massive Mersenne prime.

Smith and team linked 75 computers running Windows XP to find the new number, in which P is 43,112,609.