> I was wondering...Primenet offers a reward for the next Mersenne prime
> found, but are there any other interesting things we could
> offer rewards
> for?
>
> Perhaps for the smallest factor of some Mersenne number or something?
How about the *largest* factor found by the Elliptic Curve method?
Trial division peters out somewhere below 70 bits, which is still only
20-something digits. Conrad Curry has found a 53-digit factor of M677, so
offer an award for the first person to find a larger factor. Conrad's
record is by far the largest factor reported to have been found by ECM.
Paul
