Mersenne Primes

A Mersenne Prime is a prime number p which is of the form 2ⁿ-1. 7 is an example (2³-1). I learnt about Mersenne Primes a long time ago. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) was one of the early examples of using spare cycles on peoples computers to find these numbers.

What I learnt today, though, is that nobody knows if there are an infinite number of these objects. So far we have found 47 of these with the largest one being 2^43,112,609 -1.

As we search for the next one, I find it quite weird... like looking for some animal that is becoming extinct. I hope we will someday be able to prove that there are infinitely many of them.

This is the blog where I read today that we have not yet proven that they are infinite.