A quick glance at the news on Yahoo.com yesterday and I noticed something truly amazing. It seems that a highly esteemed group of eggheads at UCLA has discovered a 13 million-digit prime number. That’s right. By harnessing the power of many hardly used computers around the globe, this gang of hardcore mathematicians has unearthed this unbelievable number.
For those of you who don’t already know, prime numbers are those that are only divisible by themselves and the number 1. Three, 7, and 11 are some of the smaller ones. The higher you go, the harder it is to prove. Therein lies the accomplishment. A prime number of such gargantuan size was previously unheard of in the world of mathematics. Now, thanks to this group in California, a new benchmark has been achieved. It is truly a great day in American history.
Some of you may think our precious computing resources might be better utilized on more relevant projects. Shrinking the national deficit, creating an alternative fuel source, or even figuring out which really did come first, the chicken or the egg, might rank a tad bit higher on your “to do” list. Obviously, you have your priorities out of whack. These other problems are merely temporary. This is history we’re talking about. It’s that big.
By being the first to find this diamond in the rough, these bright young minds have positioned themselves well to receive a $100,000 prize. The money, awarded by the EFF (which I believe stands for Enormous Flushing of Funding) will undoubtedly be used to help them find the next big one. Seems like they’re caught up in a never-ending cycle of uselessness to me.
Now I don’t want to get everyone too excited, but I’ve also gotten wind that this 13 million-digit mega number is going to be published early next year. Being a bit of a math geek myself, I can’t wait to see it. I have crunched a few numbers and discovered that if the average word has eight letters, and there are roughly four hundred words to a page, this behemoth number would take up 4,062.5 pages (without commas).
I hear they’re going to offer it in volumes, making it easier (or actually possible) for people to lift. I’ll have to toss out the old Encyclopedia Britannica set to make room, but man, will it be worth it. I can’t wait to see my four-year-old son’s face when we cuddle up to read at bedtime. It’s like The Never Ending Story, only with numbers. He’s going to be so excited.
What really strikes me about the whole future-altering discovery is how much time they spent discovering such a thing in the first place. They could have easily published a different 13 million-digit number at random (a feat in and of itself) and passed it off as being prime. After all, who would ever know the difference? Nobody else out there is piggybacking computing power from the Internet in an effort to find it. Nobody else really cares, either. We’re all too busy wondering how high gas is going to go and which country will be the first one blown off the map in WW III.
With the $100,000 uncontested prize firmly in their grasp, maybe they could redirect some of that brainpower to more relevant projects. For instance, nobody knows with mathematical certainty which email program is better, Yahoo, Hotmail, or the trendy new Gmail from Google. Isn’t there some kind of computer-based algorithm that could be used to figure it out? Right now I’m just guessing and it’s driving me mad.
Also, we still don’t know how many individual grains of sand are on the average beach. How’s a guy supposed to enjoy the ocean like that? And for the love of humanity, would it be too much to ask that they figure out exactly when the Earth is coming to an end? Seriously.
Obviously, there are more important things these brainiacs could be doing with their time. But the biggest prime number the world has ever known is not without benefit. No, it is not the secret to unlocking lightning-fast Internet speed. Nor does it hold the key to running cars on seawater, creating world peace, or inhabiting the moon.
What prime numbers do provide, however, is the backbone that allows encrypted data to travel across the Internet securely. To you and me, that means we can buy stuff from Amazon.com and not worry that someone will steal our credit card number. So, to be fair, prime numbers serve their purpose. I’m just not sure we need one 13 million digits long to get the job done.
With all the challenges we are facing as a nation these days, it is encouraging to see we haven’t lost sight of our priorities. As the world grows stranger by the day, we as Americans are proudly stating that we will not go quietly into the night. We will prevail. If there is something insignificant, irrelevant, or otherwise completely uninteresting, we will spare nothing to find it. Those who thought the United States’ days as a global superpower were numbered had better think again. And they had better start thinking in prime numbers.
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