Is there actually any use to discovering ever-larger prime numbers?
Cryptography
GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
11–20 of 115 posts
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#12As someone who knows nothing about advanced mathematics, could someone explain why this matters? (i.e. beyond that this is rare and theoretically interesting)
The link has another link to a page describing why this matters: http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html
> Mersennes are beautiful and have some surprising applications.
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#13Is there actually any use to discovering ever-larger prime numbers?
Because they're there...
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#14I believe the classic joke goes, "Now Bruce Schneier needs to change the code on his luggage"
lol
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#15so I didn't know this, but got curious about how many known prime there are - I knew there were infinite primes, but thought that there would be some concrete list of all the primes that we had discovered somewhere - but apparently not
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/272791/how-many-pri...
> Nobody's really keeping count. ... There are very many hundred-digit primes to find. We could cover the Earth in harddisks full of distinct hundred-digit primes to a height of hundreds of meters, without even making a dent in the supply of hundred-digit primes.
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#16As someone who knows nothing about advanced mathematics, could someone explain why this matters? (i.e. beyond that this is rare and theoretically interesting)
It doesn't, really. It's just a novel prime that happens to be a Mersenne number (2^n - 1).
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#17As someone who knows nothing about advanced mathematics, could someone explain why this matters? (i.e. beyond that this is rare and theoretically interesting)
The link has another link to a page describing why this matters: http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html
Those reasons boil down to people liking novelty. Finding new primes is just one particularly nerdy form of that.
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#18so I didn't know this, but got curious about how many known prime there are - I knew there were infinite primes, but thought that there would be some concrete list of all the primes that we had discovered somewhere - but apparently not https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/272791/how-many-pri... > Nobody's really keeping count. ... There are very many hundred-digit primes to find. We could cover the Earth in hardd…
RSA encryption keys uses the product of two large primes, where each prime is many digits long. So many new primes are "discovered" every day.
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#19So that's what it's working on when it's starting up.
I also was thinking of GNU Image Manipulation Project
Re: GIMPS Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number
#20Is there actually any use to discovering ever-larger prime numbers?
Cryptography
There's no cryptographic use in finding a largest prime. It's far larger than any prime used in a practical system and doesn't contribute any mathematical knowledge about primes.
It's mostly just running an algorithm for long enough to pay off.