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From: chongo@nsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Mersenne primes and perfect numbers
Message-ID: <468@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Oct-83 20:37:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.468
Posted: Thu Oct 20 20:37:00 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Oct-83 01:13:44 EDT
References: <221@ihlts.UUCP> <463@nsc.uucp>, <712@ihuxr.UUCP>, <230@ihlts.UUCP>
Lines: 11

a p.s. on the subject:

 N
2  -1 is prime if and only if N is prime.

there are only 29 known Mersenne primes and 29 known perfect numbers.
no odd perfect number is known and many people suspect that none exist.
i dont know quite off hand what the current restrictions on odd perfect
numbers are, but they are very harsh.

chongo /\../\