Has this finally been proven?
2006-06-19 14:23:42 · 4 answers · asked by David Y 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
Conjectured, but not proven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenstra-Pomerance-Wagstaff_conjecture
"Are there infinitely many Mersenne primes?"
http://primes.utm.edu/mersenne/index.html
"Equivalently we could ask: Are there infinitely many even perfect numbers? The answer is probably yes (because the harmonic series diverges)."
2006-06-19 14:34:21 · answer #1 · answered by cotopaxi 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It has not been proven or disproven. I think most number theoriest would be that there are an infinite number of Mersenne primes, but it would be a guess.
A related question is whether there are any Fermat primes other than 3,5,17,257, and 65537.
2006-06-19 21:40:34 · answer #2 · answered by mathematician 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Since there are an infinite number of primes then it stands to reason that there are an infinite number of Mersenne Primes, but no one has been able to prove it yet.
2006-06-19 21:30:59 · answer #3 · answered by jedd c 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Yes it has to be infinite.....
Some years ago....I got a small report in a magazine that the bigest prime number with the use of the computers was discovered and it had approximatelly 25 pages in order to put all its digits on. since then the computers have far more evovled so I presume that this number has been abolished as the last biggest prime number.
Unfortunatelly I don't have any reference to give you. the number
I'll check my records to find the number and I'll post it here later if answers are still accepted.:)
2006-06-19 21:34:04 · answer #4 · answered by UncleGeorge 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋