> I had a thread going about this on the other forum, but I think I need to start one here now, since I'm probably going to want to add to it after the old forum has closed down.
>
> Last month GIMPS found the 39th known Mersenne Prime. It's the largest one yet, being about twice as long as the second largest. This means there's a new perfect number to calculate. It's going to be done tonight, and will be about 8.2 million characters long. w00t.

By perfect numbers, do you mean numbers for which their factors add up to their total? E.g., 6=1*2*3, 1+2+3=6. I think I remember one Euclidian proof in the elements that there had to be a infinite number of those.... having something to do with using a lower perfect number to always get the next one.

Incidentally, I believe the largest prime number currently known is 2^(13,466,917)-1. That's about 4 million digits.

Mark"I like numbers. They taste good."N