43rd
Mersenne Prime Found Less than a year after the 42nd known
Mersenne prime was reported (MathWorld headline news,
February 26, 2005), the GIMPS project has discovered the 43rd known
Mersenne prime: 230,402,457 - 1. The
discovery was made by Drs. Curtis Cooper and Steven Boone,
professors at Central Missouri State University on December 15,
tentatively announced by GIMPS organizer George Woltman on December
19, and independently verified by Tony Reix on December 25. The new
Mersenne prime has 9,152,052 decimal digits, making it not only the
largest Mersenne prime known, but also the largest known prime of
any type.  |
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RSA-640
Factored A team at the German Federal Agency for Information
Technology Security (BSI) recently announced the factorization of
the 193-digit number known as RSA-640. The team responsible for this
factorization is the same one that previously factored the 174-digit
number known as RSA-576 and the 200-digit number known as RSA-200.
While RSA-640 has slightly fewer digits than the previously factored
RSA-200, its factorization carries the additional benefit of a cash
reward of $20,000 from RSA Laboratories as part of RSA's program to
encourage research into computational number theory and the
practical difficulty of factoring large integers.  |
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Springer
Publishes The Mathematica GuideBooks After a nearly
15-year wait, the complete 4-volume set of Michael Trott's
definitive Mathematica GuideBooks is now available. Described
as a unique tour de force by prominent mathematicians, physicists,
and visualization experts, the GuideBooks deal with
educational, current research, and recreational problems from
mathematics, computer science, computer graphics, and physics.
The Mathematica GuideBooks are true mathematical gems.
Overflowing with beautiful results, extensive literature references,
and stunning graphics, these books provide a fascinating glimpse
into the power of computational mathematics.  |
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WolframTones
Launched by Wolfram Research A new system of
computer-generated music known as WolframTones has been
launched by Wolfram Research. WolframTones works by taking
simple programs in the form of cellular automata and using music
theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music.
Each program can be viewed as defining a virtual world and
WolframTones captures that computational world as a musical
composition.  |
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