What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number? | csmonitor.com

[David Farber <dave () FARBER NET>]

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2008/09/30/what-can-you-do-with-a-12-million-digit-prime-number/


What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number?
By Andrew Heining | 09.30.08

The scientific world is abuzz this week with news that researchers at  
UCLA have discovered a prime number with more than 10 million digits.  
The find qualifies them for a $100,000 prize from the Electronic  
Frontier Foundation (EFF) and undeniable geek cred, but a decidedly  
unscientific survey of comments from around the web concludes that the  
overall response to the announcement is: So what?

Not being a math whiz myself by any means, I set out to find an answer  
to this question. Are monster prime numbers the key to clean energy?  
Negative. Can you prevent space shuttle accidents with a gigundo- 
prime? Survey says: no. But megaprimes will help rid your golf game of  
that nasty slice, right? Wrong again.

When a frustrated parent questioned the importance of her daughter  
learning about prime numbers in school, the helpful folks at Ask Dr.  
Math pointed out that primes are the basis of RSA encryption. Whenever  
online shoppers send personal information and credit card numbers  
across the web, prime numbers provide the backbone of that security.

Besides keeping your identity secure, primes have long been used as a  
math shortcut, helping with factoring, linear equations, and other  
things you probably haven’t thought about since high school.

But why did the EFF offer $100,000 for the first person to discover a  
10-million-digit-plus prime number? The hunt for large primes requires  
massive computing power – the production of which is prohibitively  
expensive for a single organization. Distributive computing – the same  
kind UCLA used to find their megaprime – makes a supercomputer out of  
many smaller individual machines, using the web to stitch all that  
power together. The EFF Cooperative Computing Awards provide an  
incentive for everyday Internet users to contribute to solving great  
scientific problems.

The method is the message.




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