Hi:
10/22/1998
I was looking at the available ranges to test Mersenne primes and I noticed
the range included exponents which by definition cannot yield primes.
I looked at some Mersenne htmls and didn't see any mention of even
number exponents excluded from the search.
if the exponent, n, is an even number integer then 2^n is a square and
2^n-1
is factorable by:
((2^n)1/2 -1) ((2^n)1/2 +1) = 2^n-1
Example ...
2^10 = 1024
(2^10)1/2 = 32
so:
(2^10) - 1 = 1023
((2^10)1/2) -1 = 31
((2^10)1/2) +1 = 33
31(33) = 1023
My computer is a pentium 133, 64mb ram , 2gig hd, MS95, math coprocessor.
Could I contribute to the prime search?
Regards,
Jim Broadhurst
aiseki@aol,com
