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From: dxm@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Can you prove/disprove this?
Message-ID: <34080@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 29-Nov-85 02:19:33 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.34080
Posted: Fri Nov 29 02:19:33 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Nov-85 06:48:34 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 16

In an assembler programming class once we were asked to write a program 
that determined if a given integer was perfect or not.  I took a short cut
past the obvious method of finding and adding all the divisors by noticing
that numbers of the form 

		x = 2^(n-1) * (2^n - 1)

are perfect if n is a prime number.  This was true up to the largest
integer the machine could represent.  This does not constitute a proof
though, and so I lay the problem before all you net.math.wizards to see if
anyone knows of or can think of a way to prove or disprove the statement
that all numbers of the above form are perfect if n is prime.


 Doug Miller                     dxm@lanl.arpa
                                 ....!ihnp4!lanl!dxm