On 1 Jun 99, at 21:26, George Woltman wrote:
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
> is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
> The discoverer is a member of the top 200 contributors according to
> http://www.mersenne.org/top.htm
Congratulations to the "unknown" discoverer, together with George
and Scott!
>
> As was agreed after the last prime was discovered, I'm announcing
> the news to this mailing list immediately. When the prime is properly
> verified and published, then I'll announce the exact exponent. This process
> was agreed to as a compromise in keeping everyone informed, yet minimizing
> any chance of the news prematurely leaking to the press.
>
Yes - this approach is entirely sensible - though I guess the
chance of a hardware or program error triggering a "false prime
alert" is _extremely_ small, the fact that there is a substantial sum
of money hanging on the result means that it is not impossible that
some "clever clogs" could have "forged" a PrimeNet message
block. Though I don't see what good it would do since independent
verification was always going to be required.
Please note, I'm most definitely NOT suggesting in any way that
the claim is bogus or fraudulent; I'm just trying to point out how
careful we need to be before formally announcing a result as
important as this.
> And now the bad news. Since the EFF award requires publication
> of the result in a refereed academic journal, the publication process
> will take longer than normal. It could be a few months.
I don't see any particular problem in this. Once we have
independent verification, there will be no doubt that the number
really _is_ prime, and the fact should be easy to get past a referee -
unlike, e.g., a purported proof of the Generalised Riemann
Hypothesis, which would require _very_ skilled and careful
refereeing!.
Presumably a statement of fact in a news column in, e.g., "Nature"
is sufficient, rather than a full-blown paper. For that, all that would
appear to be needed is the number, the names of the discovery
and verification teams, dates and possibly some brief details of the
hardware & software used.
George - is DS doing the verification run again - or is this also
"restricted information" at the moment?
Regards
Brian Beesley
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