A New Mersenne Prime…..YaY!!!
I will be the first to admit that I am into some pretty nerdy shit. I still like video games and I like to read about astronomy and the stars and the planets and supernovas and the like. So, I understand the thrill from new discoveries in different scientific fields.
But, there are some things that I just don’t get. The other day, I opened up Yahoo!’s home page and right there smacking me in the face was the grossly unfascinating bit of news that a new mersenne prime number had been discovered, the 47th one. This astronomically large number is some 12 million digits long. To put that in perspective, if you were to write the number out on paper, you would need 4300 pages to write it all out. That’s like four encyclopedia (remember those) volumes – all just to write out this single number.
Source: system2.ipressroom.com
There’s an organization called GIMPS, which is an acronym for “Great Mersenne Internet Prime Search”. Since it takes a month with a modern computer to test a single number of that size, GIMPS has software that you can download from their website to your PC to search for these rare jewels of nerd porn yourself. This army of ubergeeks is over 21,000 strong and they find a new mersenne prime number about once a year. Yeah kids, this is what the internet was truly invented for. It’s not just for pirating MP3’s and Tweeting.
Apparently there is considerable nerdoriety the comes with being the discoverer of one of these completely useless tidbits of science. The guy who discovered this latest one is Odd Magnar Strindmo from Melhus, Norway. Yes, you read that right, his first name is “Odd“. You can’t make this shit up.
The thing that I just don’t get, is what is the point in using all of this time and resources to look for numbers that mean nothing to anyone? This information is universally useless. Who needs a number that is 12 million digits long? There aren’t that many of anything. I think if you took everything in the universe and put it all together and counted it you still wouldn’t get a number that long. The thing is, there’s nothing really neat about this. These numbers are out there – as in they’re guaranteed to be found if you test enough of them. This information literally serves no purpose, other than to give some geeks their annual erection – simultaneously.
