-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sun, 1 Dec 1996 Scottauge@aol.com wrote:
I wake of the latest find announcement, some people maybe wondering what the heck is this?!!
A mercenne number is of the type:
M(p) = 2**p -1 results in a prime when p is a prime.
Hopefully this will lead the way to see the pattern of prime numbers and being able to compute prime numbers in a far more efficient manner (after all a function that when given a prime number results in a prime number would be quite a kicker now wouldn't it!)
It doesn't. If q is a Mercenne prime, then p is prime if q = 2^p-1. It doesn't work the other way around. If it did, then it would be very easy to find out if a number is a Mercenne prime: just add 1 and find the base 2 logarithm and if the result is prime, then the original number is prime. It's much more difficult than that. It would also be possible to find an infinite number of Mercenne primes using a deterministic algorithm. Mark - -- finger -l for PGP key PGP encrypted mail prefered. 0xf9b22ba5 now revoked -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMqH2TyzIPc7jvyFpAQELUgf/Sl7QblCiYj/TQZ5on73Zj2fI7XaswGME ihXEVkI0bkcQgcm8NeSQol7cyfJJWmP0KjzIf2fnInn5dvhHRJI50b6Qp0d60oY3 dEP/uY01hX9amy32s9r+ro9X3eC+0pCleNWk1VPkIHjSlRb+Iem/eyD32jhGv6EE PA1q1lVQCjm1m44MSEWOSerVpAYMAfoFmRcrNLT757Oo6SWpVMyIVBLJ6eOtvux0 Mz9pBVoeOdjSzqJ8ZeWeFd4HG0v8o7VQqrlC1onGntKJ9//ZJMRKeE5bJmSVQQdA YydqIU0eCNW4XTBZZcH8aIgi0KOwqVlb2klMvJoEQmKgboqJ8h+TXw== =F9bd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----