Quote:
Originally Posted by pacionet
Today, January 15, 2007, the Twin Prime Search (TPS) project in collaboration with PrimeGrid (BOINC platform) found the largest known twin primes, 2003663613*2^195000-1 and 2003663613*2^195000+1.
The two primes are 58711 digits long.
The discoverer is Eric Vautier, from France.
The credits of the discovery go to two projects : TPS and PrimeGrid and to the following people : Eric Vautier (France), Dmitri Gribenko (Ukraine), Patrick W. McKibbon (USA) .
The project has been coordinated by the following people: Michael Kwok (USA), Andrea Pacini (Italy) and Rytis Slatkevicius (Lithuania).
The discovery has been made using the LLR primality testing program and NewPgen sieving program.
Special thank to all the contributors.
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Beat me to it
Anyway, my "official press release" was a little different, but also similar:
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January 14, 2007:
Today, the Twin Prime Search (TPS) project, in colloboration with PrimeGrid, has found a twin prime. The primes this project found are 2003663613*2^195000-1 and 2003663613*2^195000+1, which are both 58711 digits long. They were found by Eric Vautier of France, and it surpasses the previous record world record of 51780 digits.
So, what exactly are twin primes, and what's so great about finding them?
Well, twin primes are just 2 primes separated by two. 3 and 5 are twin primes, and so are 29 and 31. However, they are extremely rare, and their density dramatically decreases the higher you go on the number line. In fact, it is currently unknown if there even are an infinite number of twin primes.
To search for large primes of this type, Michael Kwok created the Twin Prime Search (TPS) project, and soon after, Andrea Pacini created and maintained a website for the project. However, it was never certain that TPS would find a twin in a reasonable amount of time. For many weeks, it suffered from relatively low participation rates until Rytis, the founder of PrimeGrid, offered to help out TPS by allowing PrimeGrid users to participate in the project. PrimeGrid greatly increased the visibility of TPS, which brought in a greater number of participants. Although a PrimeGrid user did not find a twin, PrimeGrid tested more candidates than TPS.
Before finding the twin, PrimeGrid and TPS tested about a million candidates. Testing these candidates on a single PC would take years, so this timely discovery would not have been possible without the dozens of volunteers who contributed their spare CPU cycles to this project. Out of all of them, Skligmund and Gribozavr deserve special recognition and will share the credit for the twin's discovery with Eric Vautier. Skligmund tested the greatest number of candidates, while Gribozavr provided the project with pre-sieved candidates.
Hopefully, this will not be the last twin that TPS and PrimeGrid discovers. After this success, the projects are looking to find a twin of even greater size, which is one that is over a hundred thousand digits long. PrimeGrid will be used for doing the actual testing of candidates, while TPS will be used for providing PrimeGrid with pre-sieved ranges.