TWO new Mersenne primes?

[CRGreathouse]

Amazing, but it seems true: http://mersenne.org/ is currently reporting the discoveries of the 45th and 46th known presumptive Mersenne primes.

[Gib Z]

Ooh so their going to get the EFF $100,000 reward. I wonder how they're going to split/spend it, as so many different peoples computers have been working on it, it probably won't be a popular decision of all the money goes to the one person whose computer happened to find it.

[CRGreathouse]

Near-certain on the award of the $100,000, though it's possible that both are below 10M. The GIMPS rules say that if two are discovered at about the same time, the first person to send it to GIMPS (regardless of discovery order!) gets the prize money. I think the distribution is half for the person whose computer finds the prime, a fifth split between some recent discoverers, a bit to GIMPS for operating costs, and the balance to charity -- or something like that, anyway.

The primes should be announced by Monday.

[T.Rex]

Yes, the announce is now available.
Two new Mersenne primes bigger than 10M digits.
Look at GIMPS (http://www.mersenne.org/) web-site and come contribute !
There is a lot of fun there !
Tony