One of the most famous mathematical problems is Mersenne prime numbers formula : If for some positive integer n, 2n-1 is prime, then so is n. At this point many scientists and programmers are having a race of whome will find the a number which applies to the formula above and the result will have more than 10 million digits. Ofcourse, that moment the "winner" will stay forever in the history of mathematical science but also he/she will take the money prize which is 100.000 US Dollars. Follow this link to learn about the award.

There are many theories connecting to this problem and trying to prove that there are infinitive number of primes applying to the mersenne theorem. Mersenne

One of the biggest researchers world-wide is the organisation named after Mersenne. At mersenne.org you can find a tool which by using distributed computing techniques tries to find the biggest known Mersenne prime and at this point the biggest has 4 million digits. The software given by Mersenne.org called GIMPS and the creator is George Woltman.

GIMPS requires a Pentium class computer that is on most of the time. The program runs at the lowest possible priority. You should not see any impact on your system's performance. The program will use about 8MB of memory and about 10MB of disk space.

Most importantly, you will need a lot of patience. Roughly speaking it will take about a month to run a single primality test - visit the benchmark page for a more accurate estimate on your computer.

If you've decided you have a powerful enough computer and enough patience to stick with the project, then visit the download page for instructions on downloading, installing, and starting the program.

The program talks to PrimeNet, a central server on the Internet, to get work to do and report results. The program communicates using the HTTP protocol and may require a little extra configuration to get through some firewalls. The program only sends a few hundred bytes every week or two. Thus, there is no impact on your network performance. The program does not require a continuous Internet connection and if properly configured will not automatically dial out to establish an Internet connection.

Finding new Mersenne primes is not likely to be of any immediate practical value. This search is primarily a recreational pursuit. However, the search for Mersenne primes has proved useful in development of new algorithms, testing computer hardware, and interesting young students in math.

(Some of the text provided here has been taken by Mersenne.org)