At 12:33 PM 12/1/2001 -0500, John Bafford wrote: >It looks to me like someone goofed in publishing this, for a few reasons. >The article consistently gets the definition of Mersenne numbers wrong. >While it does mention something about the expoential "2p", it claims that >Mersenne numbers are of the form "2p - 1", that the previous Mersenne >prime was "26,972,593 - 1", and the new one is "213,466,917 - 1".
That could be a bad conversion from some other format to HTML. >Additionally, it doesn't bother to give the length of M39, though it does >for M38, and quotes Tim Cusak as saying that he "expects the new prime to >be confirmed this week by a second test on a supercomputer". This article >was clearly posted before the official confirmation was completed. > >Also, George Woltman said in an email on the 24th that the verification >would complete around Dec 6th. So someone managed to find, or mis-find, the exponent, possibly by speaking with Entropia. I wonder how much of a blow this is to the chance of GIMPS' getting a mention in other newspapers/sites. Nathan _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
