Who says Earth has butt one moon?

Moons over Maryland. All over Maryland, I suspect, after a recent court ruling that declares that "mooning" is not illegal in this state. The judge ruled that if exposing your derriere were illegal, we'd have to arrest a lot of thong-wearing women in OC!

WTOPnews.com article



EDIT: I just recalled that jousting is the state sport. This could get ugly....*chuckle*

New biggest prime!

Prime rates are going up, and so are prime numbers. It has been known for a very long time that there are infinitely many prime numbers -- no matter how large a prime number you find, there is a larger one out there, waiting to be found. Just announced a new "biggest prime" has been found -- the largest prime number found to date (actually found on Dec. 15).

I'd tell you what it is, but it's got 9.1 million digits, and I don't have that kind of time. In shorthand, it is called M30402457, which means 2 to the 30402457th power, minus 1.

There is a class of prime numbers called Mersenne primes which all have the form 2^p - 1, where p is a prime number (7 is 2^3-1, 31 is 2^5-1). Not all numbers of this form are prime -- for example, 2^11-1 is 2047, which is divisible by 23.

This is only the 43rd Mersenne prime found so far. All the recent ones (starting with the 35th, in 1996) have been found by GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), a massive internet collaboration.