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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watrose!jsgray
From: jsgray@watrose.UUCP (Jan Gray)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Mersenne Primes
Message-ID: <7558@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 18:34:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: watrose.7558
Posted: Thu Sep 26 18:34:25 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 04:20:19 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 16

Someone posted that 2^216091 - 1 is a Mersenne prime.  Could you also post
a list of the others?

Also, how was this Mersenne prime found?  Did the discoverers try 2^p - 1
for every prime between the last Mersenne prime (M130,000 or so) and
216091?  How do you prove that a 65,050 digit number is a prime?

(Answers may end up in mathNEWS, the University of Waterloo Math student
 newspaper.)

Thanks very much,
Jan Gray

p.s. I have a program which will print a Mersenne prime (given p), using a
     naive method (i.e. it takes 10 minutes to print M216091), if anyone
     wants a fourteen page long prime number on their wall...


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