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December 30, 2005
Secular Numerology
This morning I wrote a little ditty about the numerology of 666. Well there is another type of numerology: the study of numbers only because they are there. Jeffrey Shallitat at Recursivity tells us of the largest, so far, confirmed prime number: 230402457-1. If written as an extended integer it would have 9,152,052 digits! So what is the significance of this? Well it means that those who are so inclined can begin the quest for a still larger one.
Shallitat ends his post with these words,
I'm often asked, what is it good for? The answer is -- like a painting by da Vinci -- nothing, really. It adds to our knowledge about Mersenne primes, but it probably will never lead to a proof that infinitely many Mersenne primes exist. Nor does knowing large Mersenne primes contribute to cryptography. But -- again like the da Vinci painting -- the subtle mysteries of the primes have a worldwide and longstanding appeal.
His post also gives a brief history of the quest for prime numbers going back to 250 BCE and he explains some of the mathematical puzzles that surround this quest.
By the way, 666 is 2 x 3 x 3 x 37, all prime numbers. If you prefer 656 as the number of the beast, then 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 41 are also all primes. But before you get too excited, that trick can be done with any integer that is not itself a prime number. Gauss proved it in 1801.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 30, 2005 8:26 PM | Read more on Science - General |
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