Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1999 22:15:38 -0400 To: mersenne@base.com From: George Woltman Subject: Mersenne: M38 = M6972593 Hi all, As the newspaper should announce the new prime on Monday or Tuesday, I've placed the info on the new prime at http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm Congratulations to Nayan Hajratwala and all GIMPS members for our fourth success! Each Mersenne announcement is different. This time round I finally figured out how to get the press interested in the new number - tell them its a secret. The Oregonian was doing an article on Richard Crandall and when the found out there was a new prime and we wouldn't tell them what it was, their interest level went way up! I admire the resourcefulness of GIMPS members for going on a "scavenger hunt" and finding out the exponent a few days before this email was sent out. However the resourcefulness award must go to one enterprising GIMPS member that dug through all the cleared and assigned exponent lists and human-readable files and deduced the exponent in early June! (Note to Scott - create a dummy non-zero residue a stick it in the cleared exponents report). Good luck to all in the search for M39! Have fun, George