4 ms·
Why is this better than SETI? What's the purpose of finding mersenne primes
by 6nf 7y ago
Why is this better than SETI? What's the purpose of finding mersenne primes
- rrdharan 7y agoIMO there isn't much of one, at least not enough for me to feel motivated to run Prime95 (the GIMPS client), but others may find the justifications here more convincing: https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html
- redis_mlc 7y ago> Why is this better than SETI? What's the purpose of finding mersenne primes I hope you're kidding ... We will probably never find or communicate with ET, so the effort is a waste of time and resources. Space is just too big. But interesting numbers are already known to be valuable in group theory, encryption, and other areas. Golomb numbers are used today, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_ruler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_ruler And my standard disclaimer for technological illiterates: "It's not all about you."
- Hnrobert42 7y agoI think you are getting downvoted for your tone. I wondered the same thing as the parent post. I genuinely don’t about mersenne primes.