I think I've seen a small net-project to look for factors of MM61. Presumably they are trying possible "small" divisors, (8k+0,2) * M61 + 1, with a bit of sieving thrown in. In other news, George Woltman reports that the new candidate Mp passed the preliminary check (repeating the tail end of the LL calculation). I assume a couple of machines are somewhere beavering away on the full check. The "new" number is apparently < 10^10^7, so p<33.2M. Rich -----Original Message----- From: Guy Haworth To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Sent: 5/22/2004 4:53 PM Subject: [math-fun] Re Mersenne Numbers Far too much interest in prime M(p). Composite M(p) - that's where the future is - more of them. Somewhat to my surprise, I seem to have been the discoverer since 1983 of the largest known composite M(p), namely M(M(31)). That's 21 years - and you've got no chance of that if you go chasing prime M(p). And all without the aid of gymnasia or fancy drugs. Amazing what you could do with an evening's mainframe idle time and a short program in bc. Of course, I could be wrong: if so, do let me know. Guy :-) _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun