6 Feb
2013
6 Feb
'13
12:09 p.m.
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Guy Haworth <g.haworth@reading.ac.uk> wrote:
The record M(57,885,161), discovered by Prof. Cooper et al, is a prime with 17,425,170 decimal digits. It is the 48th known prime M(p).
It may yet not be the 48th in size: GIMPS have only just confirmed the '42nd by size' position of the prime M(p) discovered in 2005. http://www.mersenne.org/report_milestones/
What are the reasons that the prime M(57,885,161) was discovered before verifying what the `43rd by size` is? Is it just that nobody wants to find a prime smaller than the largest known prime?