Double-checking milestone?

[jobhoti]

I noticed that GIMPS has double-checked all exponents up to 8,000,000. Why hasn't this milestone been noted on the status page?

[jinydu]

I think its because there's little time to update that. There are worse problems that I know, such as one banner that says something like: "There are 38 of them [Mersenne primes] known in the universe

[jobhoti]

That page gets updated every week though...

[cheesehead]

... by a guy who does lots of work for GIMPS each week and should be forgiven if occasionally he fails to make note of a milestone just as soon as it occurs. The milestone will still be there to be noticed next week or the week after ... :)

[garo]

I think it is George's policy not to mention million marks if they occur close to a Prime find. The 8,000,000 mark occured very close to the finding of M40 so it was not noted.

I must say that I disagree with this policy. But it's not a big deal.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by garo

I think it is George's policy not to mention million marks if they occur close to a Prime find. The 8,000,000 mark occured very close to the finding of M40 so it was not noted.

I disagree with your derived rule (the 8,000,000 DC mark occurred at least a couple of months after the M40 find, didn't it?), but instead of stating my own empirically-derived rule, let me point out that there may be a much more ominous explanation!

Carefully reexamine the latest two entries in the GIMPS Milestones table:

"March 9, 2002: All exponents below 12,000,000 tested at least once.
November 17, 2003: Prime M(20996011) is discovered!"

Note the temporal irregularity!

The below-12,000,000-tested-at-least-once milestone has occurred before the below-10,000,000-tested-at-least-once milestone (July 19, 2002)!

It looks like what may have happened is that the GIMPS Milestones table has been caught in a time-space eddy outside the normal flow of our universe, with future and past consequences we can only imagine!

George may at this very moment (whatever that means in this context) be engaged in a titanic struggle to prevent this space-time rift from spreading beyond the GIMPS Milestones table, and thus has little spare energy for adding further milestones. Let's all give him a break for now. :)

[jobhoti]

Granted, space-time rifts are not as simple to fix as dates on a website. However, surely George, being the genius he is, has already fixed said space-time rift and, due to the time-gap-continuum generated from the quantum-time energy gap, he's got PLENTY of time to add the double-checking milestone. (Perhaps, a dozen or so millenia.) This, or he's just lazy - like any true genius.

As for policy, I agree with garo. This double-checking milestone should be added to the list despite any temporal adjacency to the ol' four-zero.

[Uncwilly]

The milestones should be more of a log. function. As things progress they should be father (numerically) between them. So maybe George is holding off till DC hits 10M and L-L hits 15M , those would be real milestones

[Maybeso]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

The milestones should be more of a log. function. As things progress they should be farther (numerically) between them. So maybe George is holding off till DC hits 10M and L-L hits 15M , those would be real milestones

Isn't the amount of work to LL exponents 2p to 4p more than double that for p to 2p?
If so, a constant gap between milestones already involves an ever-increasing effort.
Or are you trying to allow for improving technology and more members? (And bigger farms )

[Uncwilly]

The later. Moore's law and all.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

... till DC hits 10M and L-L hits 15M , those would be real milestones

Hmm ... wouldn't they really be exponentstones?

Indeed, aren't you proposing exponentlogstones?