FLavius Valerius Constantinus Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 (edited) This first one is about: Whales Found to Speak in Dialects. Seriously, this thing is very well documented and studied. Quote from article:"Some whale species sing in different dialects depending on where they're from, a new study shows.Blue whales off the Pacific Northwest sound different than blue whales in the western Pacific Ocean, and these sound different than those living off Antarctica.And they all sound different than the blue whales living near Chile." Just read the article. In other news, "Mo. Researchers Find Largest Prime Number": The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a Mersenne prime known as M30402457 Edited February 12, 2006 by Viggen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Princeps Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 Glad to see they found the largest prime! They used to think that there was an infinite amount, but this is clearly madness. I'll have to read that article when I'm fully compus mentis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost_Warrior Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 Whales speak in dialects? I'm not surprised, but this raises the question: how do migrating whales communicate with each other? Are there some.."words" that are universal? I a pod from the north meets a pod from the south, for instance, how do they "speak" to each other? I don't understand why there could not be an infinite amount of prime numbers if there is an infinite amount of numbers, though I suppose when the numbers eventually get large enough they are bound to be divisible by *something*. What surprises me is that they actually bothered to find it. Seriously, what is the importance of discovering the largest prime number? And I wonder how much money they spent in order to gather this information? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Princeps Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 I don't understand why there could not be an infinite amount of prime numbers if there is an infinite amount of numbers, though I suppose when the numbers eventually get large enough they are bound to be divisible by *something*. What surprises me is that they actually bothered to find it. Seriously, what is the importance of discovering the largest prime number? And I wonder how much money they spent in order to gather this information? Primes are very important, more important than you might think. I'm no mathmatician, so I can't fully explain their signifigance, but I once watched an hour long show called "The mystery of the primes" (something like that) where it explained their importance. One thing that comes off the top of my head is cyphers/encriptions (esp. internet security) but that is a relatively recent development, they were important long before that, they're possibly the most signifigant "group" of numbers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost_Warrior Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 mmhmm....well, still, it seems to me that with all of the problems in the world, that wouldn't be the top of my list. If I had a choice of working on a cure for AIDS, or finding the Largest Prime Number in the Universe, I'd be working on the AIDS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M. Porcius Cato Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 If I had a choice of working on a cure for AIDS, or finding the Largest Prime Number in the Universe, I'd be working on the AIDS. Why? Judging by your interest in Roman History, you're surely not of the opinion that only "practical" topics are worthy of study, are you? Not to suggest that the Largest Prime Number in the Universe hasn't a practical application, but the practical applications came after people were already competeting to find super-big primes. I'd guess that most of what we know in science originally had no practical interest at all--people just wanted to know how stuff worked, and after they did, they could play with it in lots and lots of ways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost_Warrior Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 (edited) True, true. But I'm thinking about the amount of time, and money and resources required to do this, and in my mind it just isn't worth it. But then, I was never a math person anyway. And the guy probably got paid a rediculous amount for his discovery. Although, now I gotta wonder: how in the heck did they figure that it was the largest prime number? How do they know? Edited January 5, 2006 by Lost_Warrior Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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