Mersenne Primes have fascinated mathematicians and scientists for ages. Mersenne number has a value equal to one less than a power of two, 2^n-1 (or two to the power of n minus one).
Only 46 Mersenne primes are known until now. The largest prime known today is a Mersenne prime is (243,112,609 minus 1). This is because Mersenne primes are easier to search for than other prime numbers. 243,112,609 minus 1 was discovered on August 23, 2008 by Edson Smith of Mathematics Department at University of California. He used university computers for the discovery.
Several questions remain unanswered about Mersenne prime numbers – whether there is largest Mersenne prime (which means they are finite) is the biggest question.
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search(GIMPS)
It was discovered by a distributed computing project, called Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. GIMPS claimed a 45th Mersenne prime on August 23 2008 and a 46th one on September 6 2008. Much of recent buzz surrounding Mersenne Prime numbers have been because of them. Both numbers have over 10 million digits.
GIMPS uses Prime95 and MPrime software (downloadable for free) in order to search for Mersenne prime numbers. GIMPS is very successful: it has found twelve Mersenne primes, most of which were the largest known then.
How to participate in GIMPS
Learn how GIMPS works, by reading the “How it works page“. Then, download the software to start searching for Mersenne Primes.